The Race Against Artificial Intelligence
—By Kevin Drum| Mon Oct. 24, 2011 1:30 PM PDT

A pair of MIT economists, Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, have written a new book suggesting that computers are finally getting smart enough to do jobs that only people could do in the past. Nothing new there. But they've joined a (still small) but growing number of observers who are afraid that the jobs being displaced are being displaced for good:

Faster, cheaper computers and increasingly clever software, the authors say, are giving machines capabilities that were once thought to be distinctively human, like understanding speech, translating from one language to another and recognizing patterns. So automation is rapidly moving beyond factories to jobs in call centers, marketing and sales — parts of the services sector, which provides most jobs in the economy.

During the last recession, the authors write, one in 12 people in sales lost their jobs, for example. And the downturn prompted many businesses to look harder at substituting technology for people, if possible. Since the end of the recession in June 2009, they note, corporate spending on equipment and software has increased by 26 percent, while payrolls have been flat.

....Productivity growth in the last decade, at more than 2.5 percent, they observe, is higher than the 1970s, 1980s and even edges out the 1990s. Still the economy, they write, did not add to its total job count, the first time that has happened over a decade since the Depression.

In the same way that investors get giddy when economic booms have lasted a long time (this time is different!), there's always a danger of getting too pessimistic when an economic downturn lasts a long time. Just because this recession is a deep one doesn't necessarily mean that it has brand new causes or that it's never going to end.

That said, take a look at the chart on the right. You've probably seen it dozens of times: it shows the percentage of people in the United States who are employed. Here's the important thing about it: it didn't peak in 2007 and then plummet during the Great Recession. It peaked in 2000 and it's been dropping ever since. Even the huge housing/credit bubble of the aughts was only able to hold it at bay slightly.

In other words, something happened around 2000 that pushed people out of the labor force. There are lots of possible culprits, so it's wise not to get too invested in a single explanation. Still, I'd say that 2000 is also about the time that computers seriously started to do human jobs. Just a little bit at first, and then more and more. This trend was masked a bit by the high fever we ran in 2003-07, but when the fever broke we compressed seven or eight years of decline into two.

My back-of-the-envelope guess has always been that job losses during the Great Recession have been about one-third structural and two-thirds cyclical. The cyclical part we could address with fiscal and monetary policy if our political leaders had the guts to do it. But I suspect that at least some of the explanation for the structural part is the growing sophistication of computers, and it's not clear what we can (or want to) do about that. Computers can't drive cars or trucks yet, but that day isn't far away. And when it comes, I still wonder what all those drivers are going to do.

The Race Against Artificial Intelligence | Mother Jones

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There are lots of possible culprits, so it's wise not to get too invested in a single explanation. Still, I'd say that 2000 is also about the time that computers seriously started to do human jobs. Just a little bit at first, and then more and more.

Nope, it was mostly offshoring and outsourcing of plain old human labor. The technical part of that was communications/financial and computers helped make it work, but the computers weren't replacing anybody. They just made it easier to move to a cheaper labor force.

F

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Fredfredson,

You might be right but this graph suggests that, actually, both phenomenons are at work...



And the answer to humans being replaced is two-folded. One, new industries might emerge (just as IT did) and, two, we could also reduce working time. We had been doing that for nearly a century before the 70s....

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But if reduced working time means reduced income...

Well, no, it doesn't have to... Otherwise, you're not actually really changing/improving things.

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Well, yes exactly. so the replacement, for example, of full time, often male, workers with part time, often female workers has not been a great triumph as far as most people are concerned. Fact is that an employer will still have every bit as much interest in getting as much work out of every employee as possible. So even though productivity increased a lot over the last half century or so, we don;t see factories giving their workers more leave or half the day off - they just reduce the number of people employed, or the number of hours they pay for.

Therein lies the problem - all these things occur where employers, nopt employees, get to make decisions about them, and they will, unsurprisingly, decide what is in their best interests. We only got an 8-hour day, and even then only nominally, through workers militancy - employers didn;t volunteer it. So why shoudl any technical development in the future suddenly prompt employers to behave in a way they have never behaved in the past?

Huh?

Where did I ever say that employers would do that naturally? Of course, they won't. Like everything else, it'll have to be either negotiated/imposed by the State and/or negotiated by the workforce (via unions or whatever unifying vehicle they choose to adopt).

The absolute best we can hope for is that employers, who would suffer if they ever gave any advantage on an individual basis, would recognise the advantages, for themselves, once these things are done at the playing field level (national, international, stage).

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Well okay then. But how does that square with the goal to reduce labour costs in the west to the point that we can compete with the east? Because that is basically what the wisdom of day is demanding of us. And you say it yourself - when someone objects that "we are not your human resources" you respond by saying that capital will just flee elsewhere.

so I can't see how you can get it done. Capitalists won't do it themselves, and government won't do it because it will be described as economic suicide, and workers may or may not get it done depending on how militant they are, as opposed to how desperate. And even if it is done the problem will remain. So why would it happen at all?

As long as human beings are treated as commodities, which you agree we are, then why should improvement happen?

Originally Posted by contracycle

Well okay then. But how does that square with the goal to reduce labour costs in the west to the point that we can compete with the east? Because that is basically what the wisdom of day is demanding of us. And you say it yourself - when someone objects that "we are not your human resources" you respond by saying that capital will just flee elsewhere.

Hence my general point that, unless places like China or India raise their salaries to have them in line with their competitivity (or allow for the appreciation of their ccies, which would do the same), we should retort by declaring a progressive trade war i.e. slap them with greater and greater taxes for the privilege of accessing our markets.

And there should be no exemptions for 'international' corpos such as GE - If you produce in China and import in the US, you're liable, no matter where your nominal HQ resides.

OTOH, if Baidu wants to employ code writers in the West and export their production, no penalty applies.

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And even if it is done the problem will remain.

Huh? I didn't follow how you reached that conclusion.

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As long as human beings are treated as commodities, which you agree we are, then why should improvement happen?

Because it's in the interest of everyone, including capitalists, at the system level.

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So to paraphrase:"unless chinese and Indian capitalist can be persuaded to stab themselves in the gut, we won't have much hope of persuading western capitalists of shooting shooting themselves in the head"

I suggest the clue is in the question.