Technology

59569 readers

4136 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.

Our Rules

Follow the lemmy.world rules.
Only tech related content.
Be excellent to each another!
Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
Politics threads may be removed.
No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots

founded 1 year ago

MODERATORS

129

People are worried that AI will take everyone’s jobs. We’ve been here before. (www.technologyreview.com)

submitted 9 months ago by Womble@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

49 comments fedilink hide all child comments

In a 1938 article, MIT’s president argued that technical progress didn’t mean fewer jobs. He’s still right.

Compton drew a sharp distinction between the consequences of technological progress on “industry as a whole” and the effects, often painful, on individuals.

For “industry as a whole,” he concluded, “technological unemployment is a myth.” That’s because, he argued, technology "has created so many new industries” and has expanded the market for many items by “lowering the cost of production to make a price within reach of large masses of purchasers.” In short, technological advances had created more jobs overall. The argument—and the question of whether it is still true—remains pertinent in the age of AI.

Then Compton abruptly switched perspectives, acknowledging that for some workers and communities, “technological unemployment may be a very serious social problem, as in a town whose mill has had to shut down, or in a craft which has been superseded by a new art.”

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] tabular@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

When you know the goal but do not know how to functionally get there then an artificial neural network can be useful. To get Chinese Go artificial opponent working was done by making the program run many games against many iterations of itself to adjust itself towards the correct moves for any situation. The biggest difference is the scope of problems this type of tool is capable of solving.

Technology creating more jobs in the industrial revolution isn't a valid argument that automating intelligence will create more jobs. Even if we grant that it does, are you assuming that it will create more jobs that it nullifies forever? If we can agree there's a point where it stops being positive then we just disagree on the time it will happen.

If we assume jobs are created and they too complex to be suitable for the majority of people (who mostly work in transport) then we have the same societal problem: job available, apply within (humans need not apply). If we're to take the industrial revolution as gospel then most people leave the workforce when the jobs are automated.