The main point of her article is that advancements in AI are rapidly progressing towards a point where they may render many traditional forms of employment obsolete in just a few years. These systems will be capable of performing tasks previously reserved for humans, particularly in knowledge-based fields. And we as a society are going to have to grapple with the potential psychological and social impacts of widespread unemployment. Can people find happiness and meaning in a future where work is no longer central to their lives? Will AI cause existential crisis for people?
To further explore the implications of this shift, she writes that both too little and too much discretionary time can negatively impact a person's well-being, with moderate amounts being ideal and cites a paper by Sharif et al. (2021) that concludes that more discretionary time can be beneficial, or at least not harmful, if it is spent on social or productive leisure activities. Of course this would vary widely from individual to individual and also depend on how much they enjoyed traditional employment. And would depend on how a person utilizes free time, rather than the amount of free time they have. She gives examples of engaging in activities like exercising, spending time with family, and socializing that can lead to positive well being.
However, the assumption being made here is that AI will not create new types of jobs. But every major technological change in history has created new jobs. The nature of what types of jobs are valued changes. Many of these types of jobs that are created over a long time period are simply not imaginable at the time of the innovation. Also, I believe AI will create some degree of new wealth and if AI's promises are fulfilled, a more equitable distribution of wealth which will result in an overall greater demand for goods and services - some of these goods and services will not be AI oriented.
If I were to speculate on what types of jobs would not be in danger in the first wave of an AI economic major shift, it would be physical jobs where a human touch is valued, and she makes a similar point in her paper. So even though an AI based robot could be created to replace many nursing tasks and an AI could have an incredibly empathetic demeanor, nursing, and the medical field in general, is an occupation where many people value a human connection.
I also think there will be an increased value placed on human created work, even when an AI could do something as well as a human or even better than a human. For example, Gary Kasparov, world chess champion, lost to Deep Blue in 1997. And since then chess computers have continued to get better and no one thinks that a grand master today is able to consistently beat the best computer. However, that hasn't ended the popularity of chess. In fact, chess is probably at its highest popularity now with sites like lichess and chess.com as people want to play other people who have the same skill level as them. And the greatest grand masters' games such as those of Magnus Carlsen are followed as closely as any great grand master in the past.
Another example I believe is creative work. AI created fiction, poetry, music, and soon film is something that has caused much consternation among creatives, but I believe that once the market becomes saturated with AI created work, humans will create a demand for work that can be verified as human created. Even though an AI can create art or fiction as well or better than an human, it was not created from specific human experiences and emotions that happened to real humans. I believe works that have autobiographical content in them will be especially highly valued - because those experiences cannot be artificially created.
Beyond these examples where people will have access to an AI generated product or service but instead opt, at least in some cases, for the more human experience, I think humans will create interactions that are particularly human in ways that might not be apparent yet.
Another issue I have is the timeline. I don't disagree with the prospect that AGI is very close that both Avital is making and that Leopold makes in his paper, but I do disagree with a vision of a rapid transition to a workless future driven by AI advancements in that it may not fully account for the intricate realities of implementing new technologies across diverse industries.
Stuff just doesn't happen fast across an economy with complex interdependencies. Large company bureaucracies, supply chains, government red tape, costs of manufacturing re-tooling can be slower than expected even when there is an obvious advantage to a new technology.
Historically, the adoption of breakthrough technologies has been a slow and uneven process due to existing complexities and interdependencies within the economy. For instance, the Industrial Revolution saw the gradual spread of stream power and mechanized manufacturing over several decades, hindered by high costs and the need for worker retraining. Similarly, the transition from steam to electric power in factories took many years, with widespread use only achieved in the 1920s and 1930s. The adoption of computer technology, which began in the 1950s, only became widespread in offices by the 1980s and 1990s due to integration challenges and the need for new workflows. The internet, commercially available in the 1990s, took nearly two decades to become a ubiquitous business tool as supporting infrastructure and services developed slowly.
Even with the contemporary example of AI, despite significant advancements, its widespread adoption remains uneven across sectors up to this point constrained by integration challenges and ethical concerns. We would have to believe that the attainment of AGI, leading to the elimination of most employment in a few short years, would be able to sidestep these historical adoption challenges - which seems unlikely.
Okay, so I do think the article is very good and thought provoking and I do think we are in a period of accelerating technological change - which is very exciting. But I don't think that we will all be forced to take up surfing because there will be no work left to do.
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