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You pretty clearly have a better handle on AI and Tech than I do. What specifically in an accounting or actuarial department is AI going to do that it isn't already?
I'm not dissing any of these jobs - simply pointing out that in aggregate, they work within very narrow scope and with limited elements, and while they still require judgment and experience, they are representative of the next tier of jobs within AI's grasp. Not strictly data management, but not... advanced creative thinking or complex judgment calls for most day-in, day-out work.
AI won't replace these workers on any kind of one-to-one basis, any more than welding robots do the whole job of turning out cars. Accounting and actuarial analysis and logistics and all that will be revised into a large body of tasks that the system can do, and outlying tasks that need to be kicked to a human colleague or system supervisor. The job and task map won't look like that of a 100-person department.
Coming back to your respective points of view about the hypothetical impact of AI on the job marketplace going forward...
In some sense, it seems to me the discussion points to a world where the marginal cost of labor drops to zero or near zero for many jobs, increasing to most jobs over time (perhaps centuries). After all, the marginal cost of "AI Labor Supplied" is zero or asymptotically approaches zero. A corollary, which I'm still thinking about, is that the quantity of "AI Labor Supplied" must be driven up to approach a huge number that for arguments sake is much like approaching infinity.
Take the canonical equilibrium model:
Typical economic analysis, which applies at the margin, falls apart at a price of zero and an infinite quantity.
When the marginal cost of "AI Labor" supplied is zero, what happens to the other inputs to the production function? At first, they continue to exist. "One hour" of "AI Labor" can, say, build a product while using other inputs (metal, plastic, etc). But what about the production of those other inputs - the metal & plastic, for example? Over time in a world where the marginal cost of AI labor is zero, the marginal cost of other physical inputs will be driven down... down... down... and it isn't clear to me if it ends up at zero - that is, raw materials cost is driven to zero, as their labor costs are driven to zero. At the same time, raw materials are indeed supply constrained - there is only so much molybdenum in the world, for example. Will products be driven down the marginal cost of raw inputs plus energy? When those raw inputs can be harvested/mined/manufactured by an AI at zero marginal cost, will those raw inputs also have a zero marginal cost?
What does it even mean to allocate goods and services in a world where goods and services are essentially free and infinite?
I'm not smart enough to think through all the details.
For example, the notion that a Universal Basic Income would need to exist, as people for the most part wouldn't have jobs is interesting-- but it assumes that money is used by people and the market so scarce products are allocated to those willing to pay the most. But in a world of AI supplied at zero marginal cost, there would be no scarcity and hence no need to allocate scarce resources.
Indeed, the entire notion of money would need to be rethought. Money is an efficient alternative to barter, and in a world of infinite supply of AI, would there ever need to be any barter in the first place?
No one has claimed it is, or will be in any meaningful time frame.
But thousands of jobs only require a limited subset of human intelligence and judgment - and AI will be replacing workers in those fields within the decade.
Those are not the only jobs that are going to be threatened. People like to think it’s only low skill jobs but it’s not. They already have AI that can spot lung cancer on an MRI much much sooner than a radiologist can. In a head-to-head “competition” I saw on a documentary about AI, an AI “lawyer” was twice as fast and much more accurate in finding and correcting errors in a long business contract than a lawyer was.
I think people are equating AI with automation in general. They are very very different things.
Those are not the only jobs that are going to be threatened. People like to think it’s only low skill jobs but it’s not. They already have AI that can spot lung cancer on an MRI much much sooner than a radiologist can. In a head-to-head “competition” I saw on a documentary about AI, an AI “lawyer” was twice as fast and much more accurate in finding and correcting errors in a long business contract than a lawyer was.
I think people are equating AI with automation in general. They are very very different things.
You haven't read my posts very well. Low-skill jobs have long been automated; only the higher cost of a truly capable janitorial robot, for example, keeps humans employed in that field.
I am quite aware of the next few tiers of AI/automation job replacement, and it's going to happen fast and replace hundreds of thousands of workers, millions in a fairly near term, who do things that the average person considers "automation proof." I use white-collar desk workers who do mostly routine tasks as an example because that's the low-hanging fruit of the next wave; things like radiology interpretation are niche forerunners into yet-more complex jobs that can be done by our clanking servants.
And now we know the real meaning of "Danger, Will Robinson! Danger!"
Coming back to your respective points of view about the hypothetical impact of AI on the job marketplace going forward...
Okay, I think the penny finally dropped, here. But you chased it down the wrong slot - at least, not the most immediate one.
I don't see any scenario where "labor and goods become free." That's utopian nonsense, if not econ-class blither-blather isolated from reality, as such things always are. Even if we devolve to four or five megacorps owning all production on earth, there will be costs on that production and its maintenance and feeding of raw (and recycled) materials. So it's very interesting to postulate some Star Trek/Golden Age world in which nothing costs anything, but only one writer I know of really explored the notion of such a radically different economy, and it's not very relevant almost 80 years later. (Good try, though, Bob.)
The immediate issues are all related to what lies below that "free economy," and I've said this many times. All current economic models - all of them - are based on the keystone of individual worker productivity. What each model does with that varies widely, but commies and socialista and capitalist pigs all start with the endless minting of that basic coin... and then have slap-fights about who has the better notion of how to spend it.
So what happens when 'individual worker productivity' essentially ceases to exist? When, in the fairly near term (the lifespan of some of our younger PITAs here), the notion of unemployment becomes a footnote in economics because only a third or less of workers are 'employed' in the current sense?
Work it from there, not from some leapfrog to 'zero goods cost.'
Quote:
I'm not smart enough to figure this out.
And in the end, neither am I, and I've never claimed I was. I can clearly see the problem. I can clearly see what the immediate results are going to be. I have some hazy ideas about the way we could not just survive this change, but literally prosper in all the important ways. You want a 1000-page, 25-year plan? Ask someone else. I can only contribute feebly to such a thing, and will continue to do so. (And 99% somewhere other than C-D.)
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