This shit is scary. People don't know what's going to hit them.
(media.scored.co)
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Lots of people are going to be out of a job in the not-so distant future.
If there's any hope, it's that these companies will also have no one to sell their products to since AI doesn't need/care for what they're producing, so we'll all be stuck at an impasse.
I think AI/Robotics will eventually be the new slaves, but not for us. The world's elite won't need 95% of the population, so they'll militarize AI and use it against us.
The future is going to be scary.
I'm sorry, but the attitude of "machines will replace us" is contrary to all economics.
Technology is a deflationary pressure on the economy and a capital investment. It does not eradicate people from having jobs, it streamlines work and makes it more efficient so that while fewer people are needed for a particular niche, it does not mean that the entire industry dies, or that it isn't possible for those people to have gainful employment, nor does it mean that the economy can exist without people.
Years of experience is still plenty valuable, and will be able to take advantage of this capital investment. They aren't just going to burst into flames.
On one hand I agree with every point.
On the other hand, entire industries will go the way of the dodo, just like the watchmaker and buggy-whip manufacturer.
People who are skilled with tools or (gasp) design will have transferable skills can easily retrain, but not all of them.
For example the advent of synchronous, variable torque, variable speed eclectic motors has turned electric motor manufacture from something involving a hundred dollars of bent bits of iron and copper to sixty dollars of electronics and forty dollars of iron and copper. Before it was all mechanical processes and a hundred year old designs. Now it is an electronic manufacturer who also does a little bit of coil winding.
You are literally watching the electrical motor industry vanish.
Your comparison to watch making is terrible, but your analogy was better served by "buggy-whip", even though it's also wrong.
Watchmaking is a significant industry to this very day, at both luxury and common ends. There are probably more watches today than in human history. As for buggy-whips, you're looking at it purely from a abstract category. The business that makes buggy-whips, stops making buggy-whips if it's not lucrative, and makes... whips. Or, it re-tools to exploit it's component parts: it becomes a leather strap factory, or it becomes a stick factory, or it re-tools into some other part of the equestrian industry.
And you think that not one person who worked in building electric motors would get a job in maintaining electric motors? You don't think that the skillsets in electrical motor design wouldn't still be useful? You don't think the knowledge of electronics could still allow them to have gainful employment? Hell: you don't think the basis of managing a department couldn't be transferred to another industry not specializing in electric motors?
The point is that the labor doesn't just fucking die. That is a socialist perspective of reality: in order to keep "jobs" at a maximum, innovation (as a deflationary pressure) must be kept at a minimum. All that does is guarantee that the whole industry that adopts this becomes totally non-competitive and fucking dies. Like steel in Cleveland, rubber in Akron, or Coal in Wales: the rejection of deflationary innovation is what causes an irreparable collapse; the pressure itself is not a threat. It is not that there is "no need for steel, rubber, or coal". It's because those places became protectionist hives that refused to innovate, and when they were finally forced to compete on a freer market, they still weren't de-regulated enough to adapt, and just fucking out-and-out died.
Socialism and Protectionism did more permanent damage to local industry in America than the firebombing of 85% of the country did to Japan's industries.