People are worried that AI will take everyone’s jobs. We’ve been here before.
MIT Technology Review
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Panic over AI rendering jobs obsolete is nothing new. For decades, people have speculated and theorized about how innovation will cause technological unemployment. But in a 1938 article, MIT’s president argued that technical progress didn’t have to mean fewer jobs. He’s still right.?
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It was 1938, and the pain of the Great Depression was still very real. Unemployment in the US was around 20%. New machinery was transforming factories and farms, and everyone was worried about jobs.
Were the impressive technological achievements that were making life easier for many also destroying jobs and wreaking havoc on the economy? To make sense of it all, Karl T. Compton, the president of MIT from 1930 to 1948 and one of the leading scientists of the day, wrote in the December 1938 edition of MIT Technology Review (which, at the time, was simply called Technology Review) about the “Bogey of Technological Unemployment.”?
His essay concisely framed the debate over jobs and technical progress in a way that remains relevant, especially given today’s fears over the impact of artificial intelligence. It's a worthwhile reminder that worries over the future of jobs are not new and are best addressed by applying an understanding of economics.
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While it’s likely that breakthroughs in generative AI will transform the economy and labor markets, technical progress doesn’t have to mean fewer jobs. At a time when AI companies are gaining unprecedented power and wealth, they also need to take greater responsibility for how the technology is affecting workers. The proliferation of AI could in fact create new jobs, even as existing ones disappear.?
We have a choice going forward: we can use technology to simply replace workers, or we can use it to expand their skills and capabilities, leading to economic growth and new jobs. Read the story.
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Non-generative AI is shaping a novel form of autonomous commerce where AI avatars negotiate without human intervention to monetize entity behaviors, like IoT devices, smartphones, and humans, via smart contracts. An example of autonomous commerce is monetizing idle usage of smartphones to support a global edge computing framework that could generate $10/day in passive income globally, growing to $100+/day with permission to monetize other behaviors. Following this model, a family of four with two teenagers could generate around $100k/year by actively monetizing their behaviors, analogous to social media influencers today. AI will transform the global economy in both positive and negative ways. Autonomous commerce promises to grow global GDP in novel ways that can offset traditional jobs losses to AI, if the marketplaces embraces these innovative technologies.
Technology & Digital Strategist
1 年concerns about AI taking jobs has been a topic of discussion for many years. AI is not a new technology, it’s been there since the 1960’s and it’s everywhere ever since. While AI has the potential to automate certain tasks and therefore replace certain jobs it is also creating new opportunities while transforming industries. It is important to understand that AI is about collective intelligence, and that the human intelligence is so powerful, AI cannot replace humans entirely. Let’s look at the positive side, AI can free up human workers to focus on more complex and creative aspects of their jobs. Therefore It is crucial for individuals to continuously learn, and adapt by acquiring new skills that are in demand in the age of AI, to stay relevant in the job market. My view, is that the impact of AI on jobs is a multifaceted issue, and it is important to approach it with an open mindset, the technology is here to stay and is evolving rapidly, the only way forward is to evolve with it!
Creative Technologist | Eco-Futurist | Storyteller
1 年While automation doesn’t threaten the idea of employment as directly as some are concerned with, the reality of new technologies demanding more from each individual worker is absolutely real. New technologies increase the expectations on workers, often requiring them to learn entirely new skill sets for which they are not trained. We see this differently in the tech space, but let’s take the rust belt and Appalachia for example. Automation shut down industries due to the shifting nature of the work needed to get the job done. While new jobs surfaced, they don’t pay as well for the same amount of cognitive and physical load on a person. Job retraining has been all but a success in regions where six figure manufacturing and resource management jobs have been replaced with next to nothing. Automation demands more of the working class because now workers ‘can do more’, and in much of rural America, it means a dead end for workers who can’t make the transition to shifting tech work that challenges most digital natives to keep up.
Small Business Owner with expertise in Small Business Development and Business Growth
1 年I am I THE only one that remembers the South Park episode were they would say "they took our jobs " ??????