The big debate about the future of work, explained

Why economists and futurists disagree about the future of the labor market.

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Recent advancements in artificial intelligence and robotics have commentators worrying about the coming obsolescence of the human worker. Some in Silicon Valley are even calling for a basic minimum income provided by the government for everyone, under the assumption that work will become scarce. But many economists are skeptical of these claims, because the notion that the the economy offers a fixed amount of work has been debunked time and time again over the centuries and current economic data show no signs of a productivity boom. Fortunately, we don't need to divine the future of the labor market in order to prepare for it.

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[jakeroosenbloom]

But AI is a whole different thing from Automation. Automation isn't 'intelligent' so this will be very different.

[isidoreaerys]

“Just because cars are here doesn’t mean there won’t still be jobs that only we can do in the future”
~Horses in 1905

[Ferelmakina]

ok, let them take the f***ing jobs, as long as the resulting increase in revenue comes back to society and not to a few shareholders

[darkmatertm]

This argument reminds of the "Oil isn't running out, because we keep finding new oil reserves". Is oil infinite? No. Therefore it will run out.

"We won't run out of jobs, because there are professions which aren't automatable". The missing word is "yet". Is there anything that a human can do and a robot can't? With AI and lab-grown tissues, the answer is no. There will be a day when robots will even give warmer hugs. It's not this generation's problem, but the day will come.

That's not a bad thing in itself. It just means that the current design of our society, where everyone has to work in a market to earn a living, will simply become outdated. Capitalism will have to be replaced. The real problem is that the people with the power to change things are the ones who don't stand to lose.

[natefoster]

Back in the 1920, machines took over the jobs with hands. But today, computers are taking over the jobs with brains. That’s why it’s different today.

[musikSkool]

Someday someone will automate the job of finding and automating other jobs.

[romulocampos]

The video's 'ok Google' activated my Google home at the living room, which has started screaming the information about autonomous cars out of sudden.
Thank you

[GDMiller]

Okay, but I come from a family of farmers and longshoremen and other workers from MD who took great pride in their work. And it's not just that these jobs leave, it's that almost no jobs return to those areas to replace the ones that get killed. So areas become more economically depressed, which always affects people varyingly along racial/gender lines. This is why it's deceptive to listen to economists, because they look at things in such an idealist macro level, their assessments often fail to account for the lived experiences of real people.

[JDiculous]

Problems with this video:
1. Something not happening in the past doesn't mean that it won't happen in the future
2. Job automation DID cause massive job losses and suffering. Laborers protested, rioted, and died over this.
3. Job automation is already wrecking havock on the labor market, it's just not something some ivory tower economist will see looking at bullshit statistics (eg. unemployment rate) from his/her cubicle. Just look at all the unemployed/underemployed college graduates working retail jobs (my neighbor graduated from a top 3 public university with a STEM degree and is currently waiting tables at a restaurant), or the decimated areas in the rust belt. Everybody knows that free trade shipped factories overseas, but what doesn't get enough attention is that automation is responsible for a huge percentage of those jobs being lost. Again, you're not going to see this from some doctored unemployment figure.
4. The question isn't just about # of jobs, its about QUALITY of jobs. Unemployment rate can remain flat, but if 3 million truck drivers with middle class salaries start working minimum wage retail and personal care aid type jobs (the jobs with the most projected growth), then that's an impending disaster.
5. People need money to buy things. If they lose their jobs, then they can't buy things.

I'm glad you're raising attention to this enormously important issue, but to suggest that we should carry on as though everything is ok while millions of Americans are in danger of getting their careers automated away is incredibly irresponsible at best, incredibly selfish at worst.

[d_wang]

That's what the robots want you to think

[YashKMusic]

The automation is different this time around though. Machines are smarter and are constantly learning thanks to AI, meaning they can potentially learn whatever new jobs humans get displaced to, and creating unemployment.
On the other hand, if this automation leads to decreased production costs and end-consumer costs, we won't need to work for money in the traditional sense.
Really hope it works out that way :)

[ZerofeverOfficial]

"Robots " replace the human body. "AI" replaces the human mind. Its about to get REALLY interesting

[SuperMechguy]

We won't even need Vox presenters anymore .

[Ryukachoo]

Unemployable is the right way to put it. Machines have been replacing base tasks for a long time, but this new era can replace even very complicated tasks. All of the service industry, all of the transportation industry, all retail, will be very easily replaceable in a decade.

[arctic]

CGP Grey has excellent counterpoints to the claims in this video. The main problem is that automation is different this time. Automation started with machines doing physical work for humans, directed by humans (think printing press). Then it became machines doing physical work with much lower human guidance. Then humans were not needed to run the machines. That's fine, because people can ascend from physical labor to mental labor. We can make a robot arm to lift 1000x as much, 100x as fast, and 10x as often, so the displaced people found work in the next breakthrough. They used brainpower to do things a dumb robot could not.

Now, human brains are being replaced in the job sector by self-learning AI. Humans will be replaced in both physical and mental fields, but since the AI is self-creating, *there is no rung to move up on the ladder.* Machines and AI will totally eclipse humans in capability, with the only jobs left being centered on neither brains nor brawn. What is left for humans to do? Maybe therapists will exist for the human touch, to help over 25% of the workforce come to terms with being unemployed and entirely obsolete within the next 100 years.

[LiteralyRealRyanGosling]

Anyone watching this in 2023? This vid feels a hole Lot more like the near future then it did 5 years again.

[Yvaelle]

I'm sorry but you say 'economists' disagree with technologists. I have a masters in economics, I'm mis-represented by that statement. That one economist (Heidi) you spoke to has a differing opinion. She's also only here talking about measurable trends to date across the entire labour market due to existing technology increases, whereas the concern from technologists is about specific technologies that are not available yet disrupting specific labour markets. For example, when a touchscreen kiosk replaces the staff of a fast food chain, the labour market as a whole might not shift dramatically, but the transitional employment disruption to frontline clerks may be cataclysmic.

Additionally, the labour productivity measure may not shift at all in the wake of this sort of automation - an iphone may increase productivity over not having a phone to check emails or take calls anywhere (an increase in labour productivity to current employees) - but replacing that employee with an automated kiosk would not improve the productivity of the other human clerks. If you want to measure that, you need to measure the number of total transactions per employee by Macdonalds before and after installing automated kiosks. If the location receives 1000 customers per day, and has 10 employees (6 clerks, 3 chefs, and a manager), the transactions per employee before installing kiosks was 100 per employee. Replace those 6 clerks with kiosks, and it's 250 per employee. This is worth stressing with another example. A microscopic surgery robot today enables a surgeon to perform difficult surgery faster today than before it was installed, lets say an 8 hour manual surgery now takes 4 hours due to better vision and precision robotic arms: the surgeon is twice as productive due to new technology. Now, once the robot has recorded enough surgeries it can perform the same surgery without the surgeon. The surgeon may go find a job somewhere else that can't afford a surgery robot, he may still be able to perform that surgery in 8 hours by hand, or 4 hours with the machine but without automation - but his job at his current location was replaced (transitional unemployment) by a machine. His labour productivity hasn't changed, by his desirability in the labour market has declined.

Technologists (and economists like me) are not afraid of iphones replacing workers - and that's the sort of technology shift Heidi is implying as parallel. A better example isn't email or iphones - it's horse drawn carriages. How many horses are employed in the transport industry after the introduction of cars? Allowing a human to drive a car in 50 years will be a quaint novelty of a bygone era - just like horse drawn carriages are now. Will humans sit around doing nothing when robots take all the current jobs? No, this was never about permanent unemployment - but the transitional unemployment wave that's coming due to new human-replacement technology is just as dangerous: it will require use to redesign society, just as if it was permanent unemployment. Just as Heidi suggested - the benefit of new technology is shifting all the wealth to the top 1% of the top 1%. We'll all still find things to do with our time, basket-weaving and painting and writing video games - but we're going to need a whole lot of new Starbucks locations to provide seating and lattes for the billions of amateur writers we're all set to become when the value of our manual labour, or intellectual labour, or knowledge - approaches zero.

[KhanStopMe]

An interesting counter argument to points raised by CGP Grey's "Humans Need Not Apply" & Kurzgestagt. Although, 7:08 - labour saving innovation is being counterbalanced by the structural shift to the knowledge economy occurring in the most developed nations.

As a greater proportion the economy reaches the Tertiary and Quaternary sector, labour productivity is decreasing because most firms are structured in a counterintuitive manner for productivity in the knowledge economy.

Additionally, new technology, such as social media, is eroding the average adult's ability to focus deeply creating a decrease in productivity within the knowledge economy.

The book 'Deep Work' by Cal Newport explores this in greater depth and I would recommend it to anyone.

[Mortebianca]

I agree with the last part. It actually shows evidence (Productivity is not on the rise, as it should be if "Robots making better than us faster" was true), and it proves a point I always claim: better AI and technology and automation IS NOT the solution to everyone's problems. "Robots doing our stuff" won't bring a workless heaven on earth, because the capital produced by those automated machines doesn't get redistributed, it goes to the top 1%'s hands. Capital (worldwide) has been concentrating in the hands of fewer and fewer people, that has been proven multiple times. So bigger productivity means more capital for less people. They are the ones owning the machines. They have less people to pay and more products to sell, while we have less jobs to do.

And here I make my criticism of the video: this time IS different. Yes, some Transhumanists are obviously a little crazed up and believe that by tomorrow we will be basically living on the Sun and be Immortal and a perfect Utopia, but the point here is:
-Just because people were afraid once, doesn't mean it's always false. I mean people theorized ways to go to the Moon even before Rome was founded. And they were always wrong. And yet, we went there. Same goes for automation: they feared an incoming automation too soon, doesn't mean their fear was wrong.
-"More productivity" argument doesn't work when you consider how automation will also delete those "other jobs".
Automation is not one sided, this time. It's attacking force jobs and intellectual jobs, of all kinds. Yes, not all of them will go to the same pace as others. Yes, some will still require a lot of Human work for a very long time. But point is, no job is safe on the long run, and all jobs (some more than others) will be affected, and a lot of "side jobs raised by productivity" will be automated as well, that's more profit for less expense.

So, how do we reconcile the last part with the first one? That's because Automation is indeed fast, but NOT THAT FAST as Transhumanists like to believe.
Yes, google cars are a thing and they work. But they are not a player on the market yet.
Yes, we have Cloud computing, virtual reality, AI that think about cancer, but they have not been deployed on the market on a big scale yet, and they won't be for a very, very long time. They are very expensive, they are not perfect yet, there is popular skepticism and many other factors slow down how technology will affect us.

How do we solve this problem? Simple. Automation is a thing, we can't stop it, and we don't want to.
We can't just "move to other jobs" cause Tertiary won't have enough jobs for everyone (we can't have an entire planet of Youtubers, Writers, Actors), and they also will be automated. But what we can do is make intelligent policies, Wealth redistribution, Wellfare and Planned Developement to ensure these technology are deployed for the good of the economy (not for the few's interests) and that the wealth is redistributed. Some people think "Well if the top 1% owns all the machines, they will still have to give us stuff for a very low price. If no one buys, no one sells, and they will also die out". But that is false for two reasons:
1) They can live without us. They can automize entire self sufficient communities of robots taking care of all their needs and their economical necessities, some sort of "Robotic Horizontal Monopoly", they will have all the robots they need, so they won't need us to give them money to survive,
2) And also because without jobs, we still won't be able to afford a thing. They would should (and we should pretend it) give us part of that wealth, it should be redistributed, so that we can at least buy. Not only that is necessary for us, it's also fair.
Think about that: imagine 1000 years later, fully automated society. We have a top 1% of the population that lives in total luxury, cause they inherited the ownership of the Machines and the Capital from their ancestors (they did no effort to deserve or earn that), and the other 99% of very skilled and more intelligent people left with nothing. That's basically Aristocracy, some people ruling the economy and living better just because they are born into that. How is that fair, moral, or healthy for an economy? It is not.

So we will need to redistribute wealth, so that we can buy those products as jobs die out and society becomes fully automated. Eventually AIs will decide what to produce and what to do, since they know better for us, so Ownership of the capital will be useless and not necessary to advance. Machines will be subdued to the Good of the Community, and their products will be redistributed for the needs of the people. That is, effectively, Fully Automated Luxury Co-ownership of the means of production-

[ShnoogleMan]

Google Andrew Yang. He’s the only 2020 candidate thinking about the future.