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| ▲ | coldtea 6 hours ago | parent | next [-] |
| >Every time we automate something the luddites cry out about the coming mass unemployment. It has never happened It has happened each and every time, it just haven't affected you personally. Starting of course with the original luddites - they didn't complain out of some philosophical opposition to automation. Each time in changes like this a huge number of people lost their jobs and took big hits in their quality of life. The "new jobs", when they arrive, arrive for others. This includes the post 1990s switch to service and digital economies and outsourcing, which obliterated countless factory towns in the US - and those people didn't magically turn to coders and creatives. At best they took unemployment, big decreases in job prospects, shitty "gig" economy jobs, or, well, worse, including alcohol and opiods. With AI it's even worse, since it has the capacity to replace jobs without adding new ones, or a tiny handful at a hugely smaller rate. |
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| ▲ | tim333 3 hours ago | parent [-] | | Strictly speaking outsourcing to cheap labour isn't automation. |
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| ▲ | array_key_first 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It literally happens every single time - people DO lose jobs. They might get new jobs, but they definitely lose their old ones. And not everyone gets new jobs, because usually the new job is fundamentally different and might not be compatible with the person or their original desire out of their employment. |
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| ▲ | stavros 5 hours ago | parent [-] | | The problem isn't so much automation, but that the benefits of automation are invariably reaped by a few tech CEOs. It's not society in general that benefits, it's that the rich get richer, and the rest of us barely scrape by. If wealth were evenly distributed, nobody would bat an eyelid at AI. AI is not the problem. Late-stage capitalism and wealth disparity is. |
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| ▲ | pchangr 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| It has happened. There is a related term we use which is related to a historical fact .. see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddite |
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| ▲ | loeg 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | GP is saying mass unemployment caused by technology hasn't happened, not that the Luddites weren't a real historical group. | | |
| ▲ | pchangr 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | Correct, and I am saying the Luddites were a group of people that suffered mass unemployment following a technological change. Specifically, the luddites were a group of 19th century textile workers that were left out of work due to the introduction of automated machinery in the textile industry. In other words, they are a perfect example of what GP claims hasn’t happened. | | |
| ▲ | loeg 7 hours ago | parent [-] | | A small group is not "mass unemployment" -- that's the point. > In a British textile industry that employed a million people, the [Luddite] movement’s numbers never rose above a couple of thousand. https://www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/rage-against-the-machine | | |
| ▲ | coldtea 6 hours ago | parent [-] | | The "never rose above a couple of thousand" small group refers to the number of activist Luddites. It doesn't refer to the people working in the textile industry in general - which was a big group, and which was heavily affected. |
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| ▲ | malnourish 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| What other automations have been hyped to automate and replace so many different types of jobs at once? Whether or not it comes to fruition, it's making large portions of society feel uneasy, and not just programmers, or artists, or teachers. |
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| ▲ | vlovich123 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Except all the manufacturing jobs got shipped overseas and now those people are Walmart greeters or similar unskilled labor. Having a shit job isn’t unemployment but it’s not a huge step up |
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| ▲ | loeg 8 hours ago | parent [-] | | That isn't what happened. American jobs are more productive than ever. Americans are richer than ever. The modern luddites dramatically underestimate how bad the past was. |
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| ▲ | JeremyNT 8 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| The promise is to automate the drudge work, freeing people to pursue their passions. Like, you know... creating art. |
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| ▲ | wombatpm 4 hours ago | parent | next [-] | | But most work IS drudge work and the automation causes new different drudgery. Use to be you could dictate a letter and someone from the typing pool would clean it up, proof it, and send it. Now those same people get to write their own crappy email themselves | |
| ▲ | coldtea 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-] | | Art will be created like AI - like it already got its hands on graphic design, and game art, and vfx, and music. It will leave not-yet-automatable grudge work to people instead. | |
| ▲ | tekne 7 hours ago | parent | prev [-] | | I mean... There's the concept, and then there's the painting. AI slop from a generic prompt is not the same as "using AI to get my concept in physical form faster." Imagine, for example, a one-man animated movie. But, like, with a huge amount of work put into good, artistic, key-frames; what would previously have been a manga. That's possible, soon, and I think that's huge and actual art. | | |
| ▲ | throwaway613745 4 hours ago | parent [-] | | > what would previously have been a manga Completely out of touch to downplay the entire manga industry as "skill issue". Akira Toriyama totally created Dragonball as a manga because he was just wasn't good enough to make an animated movie! Berserk is a book because Kentaro Miura just had skill issue! Only imagine if Tolkien wanted to create the Lord of the Rings if he had AI! As if a medium only artistic merit because sufficiently advanced technology just didn't exist yet. groooaaaaan |
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| ▲ | throwaway613745 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-] |
| > Every time we automate something the luddites cry out about the coming mass unemployment. It has never happened. It has happened every single time. |
