system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Automation will not result in mass unemployment

I've heard it repeated as fact constantly over the last few years that the rise of automation and improved AI will result in mass unemployment. (For example, this point is often used as a key justification for proposals such as universal basic income.)

This argument is almost exactly what the Luddites said in early 17th century England as they smashed their mechanical cotton mills. In reality, the new availability of cheap, mass produced textiles led to an explosion of new possibilities. Yes, many cotton weavers lost their current jobs, but it didn't result in increased unemployment in the long term.

Every new technology requires new jobs to maintain, manage and develop it further - \*and\* increased productivity enables a cheaper end product which means it can be used in ways which would have been cost-prohibitive before. Technological advances shouldn't be something to fear, we should welcome the fact that menial roles will increasingly be filled by robots, allowing people to focus their energies on more creative tasks.
gpt
Every new technology also requires less people for the same result, and the new jobs require a higher level of knowledge and education.

Agriculture is already heavily mechanized, and getting more so. There have been advances in robot warehousing -- Kiva Systems, which was bought by Amazon. There's a lot of interest in self-driving cars. Amazon is working on unattended stores and already has one. There have been efforts to have fast food restaurants where you order on a tablet, and they're looking into having robots do the burgers as well.

Eventually, the low end jobs get drastically reduced. And when where do the high school dropouts go? You can't possibly think they're going to be robot designers, right?


Also, here's the thing -- the luddites were right, in a way. People don't riot for shits and giggles. Yes, the machines resulted in enormous advances, but they also ruined the lives of people who now became unemployable, and society didn't give them any workable alternatives to feed themselves and their families at the time.

Suppose trucking is automated by 2030. What's a trucker who did nothing but that for 20 years supposed to do? Sit home hungry, happy at the benefits to the economy that resulted from better logistics, in which they are no longer a necessary part? Go to school and study engineering? Where are they going to get the money for that?