logo

Why AI "taking our jobs" is the best thing that could happen to us

Posted by virtual_rf |3 hours ago |1 comments

quantified an hour ago

Trite and not quite on point. > Baumol’s Cost Disease means that when productivity rises everywhere else, the things that stay human become premium.

Tell that to farm workers. Or teachers. Or McDonald's workers. Things that stay human stay human. Human labor becomes more expensive when the human's environment becomes more expensive and the enployer needs to pay more.

> As AI makes cognitive work cheaper, we’ll demand a hundred times more of it...

To do what? The most likely answer is defensively cut through the fog of AI-generated info around us.

Every student can apply to every school on earth with AI-generated essays, therefore every school needs to employ AI to accept the right 0.001% of applicants.

AI can coordinate all of my travel arrangements, select my recipes and purchase my food, plan my parties and invite my friends... but they are all planning parties too so we need AI to send out all the "no" RSVPs...

The consumer economy will make use of some AI power to simplify life, but there will be some natural limits on how much. How many people are going to do 3x the things they do today because AI will make them easier to do? It will take quite a bit of wealth to have AI do the physical things like laundry and yard work, and if you cared to offload those today there are humans. AI driving your car isn't going to have you take many more trips. Maybe you can plan your trips differently, beyond what Siri and Google do for you already.

The number 100 was pulled out of a bodily orifice. Most of the AI usage will be for combat with other AI. Maybe it will be, but only a fraction of that will be productive.