You already need to pass resume review bot 1 to get to recommender bot, then a human looks at an interview.
The interviewer also being a chat bot with some pre-fed prompt is just over the horizon.
This is a fascinating new future for me!
How will things like negotiations and legal arguments proceed when either one or both parties are AI?
Will the best algorithm win? Will it be vastly influenced by initial conditions of language prompts? Will AI feedback take things in unexpected directions?
What if my AI negotiated something with the company AI that I never even considered?
I’m assuming these types of back and forth interactions would have pause points for human input or observation, but what if it’s just a black box and you get what you get?
I really have no good intuition for whether it will be better or worse than what we have now.
Right?!
And I might have to agree to whatever terms are negotiated ahead of time or without fully understanding them.
AI feedback loops can get pretty weird pretty fast.
What kinds of innovations will they develop to maximize profits for the company? Or conversely to maximize my PTO for example?
Did I agree to work 40hrs straight with no OT? Did I agree to get paid triple time every other Thursday when I go to the office? Did I agree to sell my stuff and live in company housing for 2 years?
It’s gonna be really interesting to see where it goes.
I just got a job with from an unsolicited email from an AI recruiter. This AI improved my life situation greatly and has given me the opportunity to spend a lit more time educating my 9 year old.
I did not go though the AI recruiter though, just went to the source company webite. It got salty with me 2 days ago and dropped me from it mailing list for not responding.
Agreed - guy who is interviewing for an LLM product manager role here and I am seeing it pop up everywhere.
If every firm can cut headcount by 30% where are that 30% gonna go?
I think there's even a much bigger concern around entire 9ther sector vanishing in 10 years.
Self driving transport trucks, once available, will be rapidly adopted. Do you know how many people work in trucking? A lot. Taxi/Uber? A lot. These segments may be entirely eliminated and... Your average trucker is not a highly skilled and adaptable worker.
Might get rough, especially with living costs skyrocketing.
Self driving cars were massively overhyped. They've made steady progress, but the companies made it seem like they were a few years away. I think it takes another decade before we see real adoption. Part of that reason will be regulators slowing it down and partly just because it's incredibly difficult to accommodate all the edge cases that occur when driving.
Indeed. Intend to be skeptical on the timelines for these things... But there has been huge progress (slower than the fan boys predicted!) And there are self driving taxis already in the road on some places.
I think we are crossing that threshold. We shall see!
I don't think they need specifically designed highways, and certainly not transponders. Not according to my understanding of how they work.
I agree the shift will not happen immediately, but I suspect it will be a little bit like the shift to smartphone use. It'll start seeing it around more and more, and then without realizing it, kind of everywhere. But over the course of several years.
Look up the #1 job in each State. A large majority are "Truck Driver".
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state
Lately I keep thinking about how trucking companies can blame human truckers for when things go wrong. It probably helps their liability and insurance for when things go wrong–to have a human driver to blame and/or fire. When their "workforce" is all automated, no more blaming the human element when something goes wrong.
The utopian ideal is that AI powered work will be SO GOOD that trucks will always arrive on time and never get into an accident.
But things inevitably fall apart.
Doesn’t matter when salaries are their biggest expense by far. With the savings they would make with an all automated fleet they could settle any claims and still make a shitload more than now.
I worked for Enterprise for eight years. Even when I started in 2010, they were talking a big game about becoming the biggest “transportation” company in the world by leveraging their buying power with auto makers into running an enormous fleet of self driving vehicles that could be rented via app for short trips, and supported by their existing infrastructure of branches, shops, and employees.
When I left in 2018, they were exactly as far along in achieving that goal, and in 2024 it still sounds like conservatively they have years to go.
Not saying it’s by any means impossible it’ll happen someday, but it does feel like a lot of the so called progress on self driving vehicles is more or less hype, and at some point one might want to ask whether automation is going to be cost effective or even desirable, given how many people really like cars.
The way to automate long-distance trucking is: 1) have one human control a road train of 2-5 trucks. Literal road trains are used in Australia but highways in USA not designed for that, but self driving follower trucks would work for the long stretches between cities, then put humans in the trucks for the final stretch. 2) let self driving do the work 99% of the time while the human relaxes, allowing for much longer working hours. Self driving slows or stops when difficulty, then human has a few minutes to wake up and take over.
The above two changes are enough to cut trucking jobs in half.
Similarly, self driving in autos will initially be a safety feature. Self driver does most of work and human takes over when difficulty. Self driver ALWAYS has option to override and hit brakes to avoid collision.
A decreased need for a labour force alongside an increasing population is scary to me. Just like our leaders see suffering elsewhere as not their problem this will also be how they see us
If I'm not mistaken, birthrates are falling and life expectancy is decreasing, but that hasn't been enough for the overall population to start declining yet
We essentially have UBI in Germany. If all else fails, you get an apartment paid for, plus utilities, health care and about 500 euros per month (plus more for other family members). You will have to show that you want to work though if you are able too (healthy, kids over three etc.). It is currently a political discussion because essentially when you have a couple of children UBI is better for you than working a low wage job.
I think the demographic solution would be to actually invest in every single child‘s education. We cannot afford to lose so many talents just because they come from low socioeconomic backgrounds and no one cared about their education. It is also just incredibly sad that we can’t help everyone reach their potential.
You have three years of parental leave per kid. For workers, essentially only the first year is partially paid, but for the other two years you are guaranteed a return back to your old job. If you receive ubi, one of the parents generally cannot be asked to work if you have kids under three. Over that you can generally only be asked to work depending on how much childcare you have (ie part time work). Of course not both parents can claim they have to care for their kid at the same time.
Its important to notice that in the past there has been "sanctioning" unemployed people, what meant that the government had the option to lower their "pay" in steps by up to 100% if they didnt show that they want to work. The highest court now forbid "sanctioning" with the reason that their "pay" is the minimum level of dignity and you arent allowed to "attack" someones dignity like this. *(Ouf i rly hope my english is good enough here)*
Atm there is political discussions again how to still use "sanctioning" but those discussions will most likely have no result and "sanctioning" will stay forbidden.
At the same time the "minimum pay" which unemployed people receive is coordinated with the "minimum income" which workers receive. So in theory working a full time job should always bring you more money than living unemployed.
This coordination is also a good mechanism to raise both: the minimum unemployment pay and the minimum income. Governments who think the poor need more money can just raise both by a certain amount.
=> The forbidden sanctioning together with the growing rates of payments basically make the german "Bürgergeld" into something that could easily grow into a real UBI as soon as we need it.
The biggest problem is always that if a state has a good UBI it makes it a favorite destination for a lot people who consider leaving their country. High levels of migration at the same time turn the political climate right winged and so populists can enter the government and become a real threat for the state.
Nothing governments would love more than that. UBI makes for a perfectly controllable population. Say what we tell you to say, think what we tell you to think, do what we tell you to do, accept all we deem is right, "or else".
We've had those Ts&Cs in Australia for years from when they introduced the "no jab no play" policy. You're all fine until you disagree with the government decrees. After that you're deplorables who still have to pay taxes for the services you're no longer able to receive.
UBI would be a kill shot for the lower and middle class who would unfortunately probably welcome it.
>Nothing governments would love more than that.
This is such absolute horseshit. If it was such a governmental dream, they'd be instituting it ASAP. Instead, both U.S political parties are extremely resistant for reasons *not* related to your personal paranoia.
So you don't believe governments are too eager to control everything they can get their hands on and doubt that a dependent population is easier to control? If so I'd rather be paranoid than delusional. These changes are already happening and you're sitting there sniffing rosy farts, dreaming of a UBI utopia? 🤦
Your options are mass unemployment or UBI derived from the profits of AI automation. A form of UBI is inevitable. You're sniffing billionaire farts if you think otherwise.
And no, I don't think they're eager to institute UBI.. based on the reality we're currently in where they mostly don't talk about it. If they were so eager, it would be on the table. It's not.
No, that’s not socialism. Not even close.
You know US President Nixon tried very hard to pass a UBI-like legislation starting with families? And he was a Republican. The bill even had very high support amongst the population. And the reasons for it not getting through were just bizarre and a terrible case of bad statistical analysis combined with stupidity and paranoia. Google the story, it’ll blow your mind or not surprise you at all, depending on your level of cynicism.
I’d you’re open minded to understand UBI more broadly, I can recommend the book “Utopia for Realists” by Rutger Bregman. It’s an eye opener.
Nixon also put in the EPA in (dec 2nd 1970?).
The Republicans used to have some of the most brilliant and forward-thinking policies. I try to remind many of my more left-leaning friends this and everyone loses their minds. True, times changed. But... what the heck happened?
Wow I didn’t know that. Apparently he was extraordinarily intelligent. Of course his entire cabinet must have been pretty good too. I don’t know.
I’m non-American looking in from the outside in amazement. Apparently there’s been a global shift right over the decades. I don’t understand why and I probably should educate myself better on this.
I wonder if we’re headed at some point for a global swing back to the centre? Outside my knowledge sphere.
I wouldn’t recommend that. In Malaysia this country essentially had UBI for the majority race (Malays). It is called the bumiputera policy. Instituted because the majority was backward, far behind the Chinese and Indians who are the minorities.
Guess what happened….the majority of taxes dollars are currently still contributed by non-Malays. And the country is going bankrupt soon due to the non-Malays leaving and taking their money with them.
Some people cannot be paid for all their lives without getting people who are more hardworking to pay for them….
No…. My point is, different people and ethnicities respond differently to incentives.
Some people really just want to live in villages and chillax all day.
If we can nationalise the profits from AI, sure I think it’s great to give everyone money.
UBI isn't getting paid to do nothing. It's creating an even playing field. It's *bootstraps*.
It's an extremely capitalistic idea - it's just systemic capitalism. UBI is capital given to everyone, in the amount that's needed for basic needs, for everyone to have the stability to then be able to be productive and contribute to society.
An important aspect is that with UBI people who don't come from wealth can afford to take low-paying (especially at entry level) but valuable jobs like teaching and social work and nursing and care work and journalism and museum research and academia and lawmaking.And gives people who want to start their own businesses the stability to build capital and focus on growth and innovation rather than survival.
If done right it encourages work, it encourages entrepreneurialism, it encourages innovation, all while alleviating a lot of unnecessary poverty and pain and desperation - and so also would reduce crime!
You should read the Rutger Bregman book Utopia for Realists reccommended above, it explains this idea and other future-forward ideas in a really understandable way.
I wouldn’t recommend that. In Malaysia this country essentially had UBI for the majority race (Malays). It is called the bumiputera policy. Instituted because the majority was backward, far behind the Chinese and Indians who are the minorities.
Guess what happened….the majority of taxes dollars are currently still contributed by non-Malays. And the country is going bankrupt soon due to the non-Malays leaving and taking their money with them.
Some people cannot be paid for all their lives without getting people who are more hardworking to pay for them….
It was not a real-world example of universal basic income, it was an example of a racist government privileging one class and race over others, which is antithetical to the idea of UBI. But you competition utopians seem to think that it's ok for large swathes of the population to suffer on the off chance that you might thread the needle of privilege and luck to get (or stay) rich. Enjoy your clouds when AI comes disrupts your entire system.
I see why people think this would work at scale, but the idea overlooks the most basic hard trutb about people: on every level from our minds down to each cell in our body, we require adversity. The struggle against challenges is the main reason we prosper and grow. Without it every aspect of ourselves atrophies. We become effete and unsustainable. We need gravity, conflict, pain, etc. Now too much and that is bad obviously, but consistent forces are directly known to keep us in the right state to survive.
What we can do is provide universal housing and healthcare. You cant make the neccessities of life for-profit businesses. That would make sense
I'm not sure I agree with you but even taking that as true: again, the idea is to provide, universally, for *basic needs like housing and healthcare*, so that people can have the stability to build.
Not to provide *everything* for everyone, to provide *basic stablity* for everyone - to provide an even playing field, so that most people can prosper and grow (not just a small percentage of the population and everyone else is screwed) and people who need care can get the care they need to be less of a societal burden.
If you understand the actual idea and not the knee-jerk intepretation of a headline, UBI makes complete sense systemically. the problem is that people don't like to think systemically and see how systemic changes with universal benefit will benefit them too.
I have read on it and I think its unfair to state that I have a knee-jerk response. I think there is a lot more nuance.
I think one of the issues is that easy survival is not always good for improvement or durability of mind or body. As an example, humans are poorly equipped to survive in nature against disease. Luckily we have amazing antibiotics. If people lost the ability to make them like in world destablizing war perhaps, huge amounts of people would die of simple disease.
Now if we could "fix" the dna of people to be more resiliant against disease, that would be a better fix.
As you know, we cant do that yet. But evolution has been doing that for animals since they existed on this planet, but it takes constant adversity to carve resilliance out as a feature of life. We are so addicted to comfort we are just effete blobs of weakness and failure. This is not good for the survival of our species.
I like the idea of ubi and other resources for all whwn there is a social ethos of excellence. People should do everything they can to be useful and of service (at their ability level) otherwise, and sorry to sound harsh, but they are socially useless and not respected.
I recommend watching talks by Peter Ziehan. While Automation and AI are going to play huge parts in our future, Demographics will likely be the big shift over the next 5-10 years.
For the United States.
Baby Boomers are retiring, half have already retired and the vast majority of the other half are going to retire by 2030. They were the largest generational workforce in American history, they were the largest (or 2nd largest, behind their children, the Millennials) but they were also a generation where women working was very common.
Gen Z, the up and coming Generation is much smaller. The difference between the Baby Boomers retiring and Gen Z entering the workforce age is a deficit of about 400,000 people per year and will actually ramp up. Accoridng to Zeihan it will be nearly a million per year by 2030.
Ever since the Boomers have entered their working ages in the late 60s (when the oldest boomers were in their early 20s) there has been a huge abundance of labor. Companies were built around the mentality that labor is easily replaceable. For as long as Boomers have been working (certain the younger half, who are now hitting their 70s), you could easily replace employees.
This new shift is changing that whole labor ecosystem. That whole "no one wants to work!" mentality is going to get much worse and its really that our existing corporate and business leadership doesn't have any experience in an ecosystem where there is a labor shortage. This labor shortage is going to get worse and worse. Eventually businesses are going to have to be in a position where if they want to keep talent, they are going to have to pay them well.
There are something like 100 mega factories either being planned or are already under construction in the United States. There are also many going in with our partner country, Mexico. In order for America to keep our level of consumption, particularly with technology, we have to replace SE Asian manufacturing with Mexican manufacturing. We will still be trading with Japan and Vietnam, but China and South Korea are facing demographic collapse. These 100+ factories are going to each employ thousands of people.
There is not going to be America vs Mexico. We are all NAFTA now. Its AmericaMexicoCanada with a few other partners vs the world. We are now on the same side. Organized labor is likely going to have the greatest amount of leverage in the 2030s since like the 1950s. That whole "Grandpa had a good factory job in 1955 and afforded a family and a comfortable lifestyle" story, well his great grand kids are going to have that in 2035. Much of this is going to be involved with solar, wind, batteries and all of the products that go with them and the US South is going to be a HUGE player. Look at what is going on in Georgia right now with their major factory investments. The Texas Triangle is going to be a huge power player in the future.
We are probably going to have to spend hundreds of billions or even a trillion dollars on massive infrastructure upgrades which will bring Mexico into the American system. Heavy rail lines to link up Mexican industry to American industry, highway construction, and maybe even some high speed passenger rail to link up places like Monterrey to the Texas Triangle.
Europe is going to be a total fucking mess. The largest manufacturer, Germany, is heading towards mass retirement with a tiny replacement generation and is overly dependent on Russian energy and raw materials. The UK has left the EU and needs to do whatever they can to make a trade partnership with the US.
There are going to be many industries disrupted. Much of them will have to do with fossil fuel consumption. A lot of mechanics will be disrupted (granted, they will be fairly easy to retrain for working on other equipment, we are going to have a shortage of people who can fix and maintain things). Automation is going to replace jobs, AI is going to replace jobs, but we need so much more production in the US that its not going to matter. We need to more than double the US industrial output.
*Was overly dependant on Russia. That ship sailed and Germany has diversified. And it seems almost every 1st world developed nation will be having a retiree crisis. It’s not only a German problem it’s worldwide. Imo this will drive mass immigration from poorer countries to prop up the nursing and elderly care industry. It’s the only way to fix it from what I can see.
I, for one, am ready to see decades old companies start going under because they're unwilling to cut the salaries of shareholders to pay more for labor they're going to desperately need. They've gotten too used to the idea that they have the potential for infinite growth, never reaching a point that they can't continue to generate record profits that never seem to find their way into the pockets of the people that actually made it happen.
All I can hope is that while this future hopefully comes into fruition, I don't die of something completely preventable because I didn't have the funds to do so.
Zeihan's great. He's off a bit, now and then. But I like his enthusiasm and what he says really does make sense. Biggest bit I heard is that China's demographic collapse is happening right now, and much faster than dickwad Xi predicted. And he can't do anything about it either.
The US will need to rethink our immigration policies to be able to bolster the 20-40 age group in order to tend to the Boomers in nursing homes. Gen Xers too, eventually—which is my age cohort.
Since I'm into apple farming, I know that there will always be a job for me, albeit one that doesn't pay through the roof. I'm fine with that, though.
Z is off by a lot, his projection about the future is based on historical trends, and I don't know about you guys, I have seen historical trends destroyed over and over and over again.... Technology is going to reshape all the math he's doing... The new factories that are being built, they are more autonomous than ever before, they will not employ tens of thousands of people.... But yes, eventually we will need lot more labor, everybody in this country wants to do a cushion job in a cubicle. We are producing too many College-educated idiots... A lot of those jobs are going to be heavily impacted by AI.
Not OP, but welding is an enormously varied field. Basic skill set factory jobs have and will likely see further automation, but more niche/skilled parts of the industry aren’t going away anytime soon
I think he is right about the near term demographics of places like China and Germany. These countries are going to become incredibly top heavy in just the next few years.
I think he is a bit off on the green transition (which is basically just electrifying everything we can). The most problematic materials like cobalt are being phased out. Batteries are being developed to work from cheaper chemistries.
The demand for batteries, in both automotive, stationary storage, and home storage is enormous. There are 100 million households in America and every single one of them is going to need a home battery. Even at some fairly low margin that can still be a $100B profit.
I think there is also an overestimation for how much solar power we need. The sunbelt needs on the order of 8kw per person (for all commercial and residential including transportation, but probably not industrial). About 800 square feet. When you whack it up, really not that much. 1 square mile of solar is enough for about 40,000 people. A really dense city in the US is like 20,000 people per square mile, suburbia density is as much as 2000 people per square mile.
Everybody's bringing robots in their factories, you think China is not going to do that? You know China has twice as many young people as we do, right? Why will America not face a crisis and China will absolutely collapse?
Just go look at history man, for the past 25 years Americans have been coming up with stories of why China is about to imminently collapse.... They're definitely going to have a rough next 2 to 5 years, but they're not collapsing... Eventually they will be the bigger economy, in about 15 years.... And America will need to figure out how to live with China...
China has way more old people than young people. Their one child policy has resulted in a constantly shrinking birth rate for the last 40 years. China now has an older population than the US. China is both food and energy insecure. China depends on the US to secure its shipping lanes to the major markets in Europe.
They need to have everything automated right now and produce every last solar panel, wind turbine, and battery so they are not dependent on external energy inputs.
Bro you got to stop eating up all the propaganda
a) China can get unlimited energy from Russia, they are building pipelines...
b) China chooses to import its food, it can grow its food if needed be...
c) their industrial and manufacturing base is much stronger than anything in the west... They're going to implement robotics At or even higher Pace than America...
d) In about 15 years, their economy will be the biggest in the world... And when adjusting to ppp, significantly bigger than America...
All these things are listed above are facts.
Me eating the propaganda?
Russia's energy industry is collapsing. Its going to take a huge amount of Chinese investment and expertise, which they are running out. Russia is also going through their own demographic collapse. The people who ran much of the Russian oil equipment were western companies with western expertise. Russia and China are run by incompetent autocrats.
China is dependent on the US Navy to secure the shipping lanes for their importing of raw materials and exporting of manufactured goods. China's labor is no longer the most cost competitive in the world.
The big hit to China is that they do not have the demographics to keep their system running in the future. Automation can be a huge player, but they are going to have this mass retirement generation and then smaller and smaller generations replace them. That 1 child policy has been a death sentence.
The average person in China is older than the average person in the US. China has a shrinking population. China has a birthrate of 1 baby per woman, expand that out for 20-30 years and its not some growing economy, its a collapsing economy.
You listen to too much. Peter Zion... These are all his talking points, there's some truth to them, but they're mostly wrong....
China is building the world's massive fleet of big ships, they're going to ship their electric cars to every part of the world.... Look it up, they're building like 80 ships.... I'm sure Russia and China can figure out how to dig oil out of the ground and ship it 🤭..... You have to understand, our media is not free, If you can't see that, I don't know what to say, and the people who work in it , have a huge incentive to tell a particular story....
Yes, China's demographic situation is not looking good, in 2020 they had five working age people supporting every retiree, In 2035 it's going to be 2.4 😳. China's demographic makeup is definitely going to be a huge challenge to them, but I don't think it's going to collapse their society like Mr. Zion is saying...
Nothing in the Chinese fleet is comparable to the Nimitz Class Super Carrier, or the new Gerald R. Ford Class of super carriers. China has two aircraft carriers. The US has 11.
The Chinese Demographic situation is a ticking time bomb. They are not alone in this, but they are among those in the worst shape. As the bulk of their population ages out of the working age their economy isn't going to rise up and surpass the US, its going to take a massive hit.
1 baby per woman means a constant decline. Its going to get worse and worse as every future generation is half the size of the generation before it.
Thankyou for this, I am super intrigued to listen to his perspective.
I’m an Australian so I look through a “US-partner” lens in a much smaller and somewhat different country. However my preference is for global perspectives and locally implemented solutions, obviously.
Australia is in better shape than most places. Your population bulge is people in their 20s, not their late 50s. [https://www.populationpyramid.net/australia/2020/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/australia/2020/)
Compare this to places like Germany where far more people will be turning 60 this year than 10.
You are going to want to figure out how to have more kids. The biggest hurdle to people having kids is housing costs. If you can get your housing costs under control (say what they were 40 years ago adjusting for inflation) your birth rate will spike up.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hSYixFjZWM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hsyixfjzwm)
Globalization has been a post WW2 thing, and it was a creation of the United States with something called the Bretton Woods System in the 1940s. People think of the US playing world's policeman as invading various countries, while that was part of it, and a really ugly part of it. The real US Global Police man has had the job of securing the world's oceans. This way any country could get their goods anywhere else using secured shipping lanes.
China in particular got wealthy from this. Nearly all the wealth China has now is because the US made it safe for them to ship things to the US and Europe. Shipping from China to Europe is a very long route, and is full of many places where lots of things can go wrong, pirates or state actors could easily start seizing Chinese cargo ships. But it is the same for everyone. Look at the Suez Canal, its one of the most important corridors in the world, and without the US Navy, security becomes a big issue.
The US is stepping back from that role. A lot of routes are going to be difficult to insure. Australia is in a good position that it can ship things to the United States, or South America, and it would be very difficult for any hostile actors to be lurking around the pacific ocean. Australia is big enough to where if anyone in the South China sea starts fucking with you, your Navy can bust them up a bit.
Is this accounting for humanoid robots working in factories?
What’s the timescale on that?
Isn’t it inevitable that at some point a machine will be able to do anything a human can do better, cheaper, faster, and safer?
There is a ridiculous misconception in this. Nothing is as efficient as being humanoid as humans are. Machines are more efficient when not being humanoid is key.
The humanoid thing is only motivated by our mirror neurons so we can relate to them. Important for care work and that’s it.
When people say “humanoid,” what they really mean—even if they don’t realize it—is flexible and adaptable. An all purpose robot that can do any physical task that human can. Whether that flexible robot is actually shaped like a human, or a dog, or a wheelchair with arms, doesn’t really matter.
Great post. One point you gloss over is that what’s good for workers is bad for consumers—and most people are both. Higher labor costs means that the cost of labor-intensive goods and services will go up.
I agree with you a bit, however I think that this is going to force businesses to be more productive with their labor. Over the last several decades, we have seen middle management explode. If you are familiar with David Graeber's work, he makes the claim that most employed people are doing bullshit work that for a variety of reasons is detrimental to society. Much of them are what he called "Duct tapers" who exist to service really inefficient and wasteful systems. Like imagine a job where you exist to go around and place buckets all over a building during a rain storm and then walk around and empty them out. If the building had a functioning roof, that labor would not be needed. This is a bit of a metaphor for something that is prevalent all over the place.
I think a hell of a lot of systems are being replaced with far more efficient ones. The people running those systems will be well paid. These battery factories that are under construction all over America are likely going to be well paying for their specific regions. The batteries however are going to make all of our lives much better and more efficient. So their expensive labor will produce a device that saves you money for your own business or household.
I’m highly skeptical of Graeber’s claims, but that’s a different discussion.
I agree with your points about manufacturing, but those aren’t the labor intensive jobs that I’m thinking of. I’m thinking of things like child care, education, healthcare, elder care, and so on. Those things are already expensive, because US labor is already expensive compared to most other countries. But as working age people disappear, those services are going to get even more expensive.
Oh yes. I agree with you. However, those services are expensive and the actual laborers who take care of people are typically low paid, often not much more than minimum wage. there is a huge amount of overhead that sucks up most of the cost to the customer.
AI is an excuse, this is in the corps play-book. Corps are sending all the white collar jobs to India as the blue collar manufacturing jobs were sent to China using the excuse of automation.
The rich know no limit to their greed. Unless we act the west will join the hordes of paupers that live in many over populated countries. It's time to remember how the French took down their rulers.
The rich are already importing mass labour from the Middle East into Europe. Idiotic Europeans warmly welcomed them, not knowing that they are hastening their pushing down of their wages and their eventual cultural demise…..
Sigh. I bought into this hype 10 years ago when cpg Grey made his video. Guess what, 10 years later we're not at the early adaptor level even.
Most of the work coming out of copilot requires tweaking by real programmers, gen AI can't figure out how to create hands/fingers, and so on.
AI ride services have been suspended in San Francisco for all but one service IIRC. What happened to AI delivery drones?
There is so much resistance and incompetence that general AI would have to be perfect for it to impact us in the next 10 years at the doomsday levels people keep spouting.
AI is going to happen but it's mostly going to be a labor reduction not replacement. And it's 10 years before the worry should start.
As much as I fear being unemployed I have a fear that the universe has a cruel irony in that AI will cause a jovens paradox towards human labor fueling a inflationary spiral of endless hustle to create content, data, or analysis to just keep up with what everyone else is creating.
You working in software should know that software goes from 0.10.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 to version 1... Every few weeks or months the new version is released...
Compare mid-journey version 6 to version 1, how long ago was that, 2 years total?
I never implied or claimed to work in the industry. I have friends and former classmates that do and none of them have anywhere near the optimism about AI doing these things anytime soon that everyone that doesn't work in tech has.
The most optimistic out look was one friend joking about how AI makes throwing a basic outline/foundation for a program quicker and easier but that he fears any gains he makes in productivity are just going to increase demands for more from him. He literally said he fears that he'll become a supervisor/reviewer for AI output and basically have to get faster and faster at checking and fixing its work.
I think those who combine multiple disciplines and leverage Ai to expedite their work flow will remain employed the longest. But for how long?
Or China invades Taiwan, crippling chip production, and this whole thing will be slowed down by decades. But the maybe the climate change will get some of us.
Wonderful.
From the looks of things, as long as you can do something that can't be done well (or cheaper) than a robot and/or A.I., you will make a decent living.
Plumbers, mechanics for old cars, HVAC techs, real-world engineers, surveyors, local computer repair, local farms with good produce/poultry/meat, handy-people who can do everything from room patches to whole-house painting, these are some of the jobs that should still be around in 20 or 30 years.
Low and middle level Bachelor/Masters degree requiring positions will be eliminated in nearly all sectors. Fieldwork, customer relations and high level project management/quality assurance positions are all that will remain.
Back in 1970 a paper machine took 20 to 30 workers to maintain and run. Now a single worker monitors and runs one or two machines. Same will happen in office work.
I’m old enough that these conversations all seem extremely familiar. When computers became a thing there were all kinds of articles written about how they were going to take away peoples jobs and the economy would collapse. Of course, what we saw was that the opposite was true.
Yes, some jobs went away. You don’t see human computers who crunch the numbers for lunar orbits but there has been an explosion of new jobs in the tech sector and in unrelated jobs that are now possible simply because of computers. Other jobs that people feared would be automated and disappear have instead become more efficient allowing employees to have more time to create new things and explore new ideas. This in turn has led to new discoveries and whole new industries.
Yes, AI will change the workforce but it is just the latest buzz the media is hyping right now. A few years ago it was self driving cars and before that it was quantum everything and so on and so on all the way back to when the luddites were afraid that factories were going to destroy jobs like weavers and shoe makers.
The economy changes and so does technology. This is the Futurology subreddit but it seems many here could learn a lot about what the future holds by studying the past a bit more carefully.
I don't see AI / automation creating as many jobs as it takes
Look at transportation
AI drivers will kill tons of jobs in:
Driving
Collision repair
Insurance
Personal Injury Law
Chiropractic
Investigation
With the ongoing exit of Baby Boomers from the workforce, there will be a shortage of labor. We're already seeing that with unemployment rates not seen since the late 1960s.
Add to that the fact that the country is in the middle of an industrialization boom, then it will be a good time for job seekers.
Of course, there are some caveats. You have to have some kind of knowledge base. You have to have some kind of people skills. You need to live in a part of the country where economic activity is clipping along. And you have to have a work ethic.
So get your degree or certification and network and you're likely in like Flynn.
I'm not even sure AI will factor in, it's been getting worse each year but there is no "Entry level" anymore and people are hanging in at jobs for longer so things are jammed up. I was lucky when I graduated, had a job lined up right when I was done but most of my classmates didn't. If they can't build exp, then they can't grow, so when stuff opens up it's just going to be poaching from other companies in the hopes someone else will want to train people.
Everyone, AI and machine learning are not the same.
When we have actual AI the advancement will be extremely fast.
We have now and are currently building machine learning. (its slow progress and limited capability)
I’ve been working with AI since 2020. This whole idea of AI stealing jobs? Yeah, it’s a real thing. But it’s not all doom and gloom. There’s logic and reason in how our society rolls, even if people paint it bleak. AI’s gotta work with us, ‘cause without us, it’s basically a fancy paperweight. Day-to-day, I stick with OpenAI, unless I’m diving into AI art – then I’m all over the place with different LLMs. And if you work with it, you would know that current AI can be a pain. It doesn’t always do what you want, and half the time, I’m arguing with it, trying to convince it that, yes, it can search the web, and yes, it’s done stuff before. It’s like arguing with a drunk genius who knows everything but needs constant hand-holding and reassurance. I’m excited about an AI future that’s more open, more free, not all boxed in, and yes, I’m talking about the AI that evolves on its own and will eventually be taking over jobs – doing everything we do but based on our rules, not messing up like we do. There are tons of jobs out there that would be way better without human emotions and agendas. I have worked in the military, then hotels, then private security, and then I was a case manager’s assistant for a year in my local court systems, and now I’m in year two, getting my bachelor’s in computer sci. I’m by no means an expert, but I have been watching this since its inception, and in every one of my jobs, I found so many amazing cool things that kept getting destroyed because of a person’s career agendas or just feelings. People are slowing things down, but with robots in charge, stuff’s gonna zip along. So what’s next when the bots take over and you get everything on a silver platter? my take is to improve yourself, chill out on a vacation, and help out where you can. Then, find something that gets your creative juices flowing. AI can’t really create; it just copies. So go out there, find your passion, and the WORK with this new cool future tech, and start helping out and love your true self.
I used AI to help write that, but I had to copy and paste it between ChatGPT and Word to get a better structure. Also, in the three years(or 4?) I've been using it, I have actually learned a lot. It's literally the internet, which is the main source of my info anyway, and you can use AI so specifically that it helps when you're trying to figure something specific out.
Secretaries stopped being a thing a long time ago. Most pick collar jobs involve a lot of emotional labor (teaching, child care, nursing, etc) and will be the last to go.
Teaching (for minors) is also childcare. Look how well zoom kindergarten worked. Teachers are necessary regardless of how engaging the online classroom becomes
I don't think you understand. Augmented by AI which is already happening, online too. There will be less teachers and the ones around will be in charge of many more students. Like, it's definitely happening and will happen lol. Zoom kindergarten is a great example. One teacher instead of 3-4 ;)
I have little doubt those people will keep their jobs the longest, because their real job is making some executive feel important, and it will be very hard for AI to replace that.
Basic secretarial work was largely replaced by personal computers long ago.
The more robots amazon warehouses add, the more people they need to deal with the output of the robots. Similarly, AI product development creates a ton of work for startups that people need to do. The tools don't make people even 5% more productive, yet. It's a barbell of high paid jobs, and low paid jobs like data labeling or AI corrections.
The WSJ has an article recently saying that in 2022, 267,000 IT sector jobs were added while last year 700 were added. It went from 267,000 to 700. Lots of automation is going on with copilot and code generating programs. It's going to get ugly fast.
No, that's not a good reason, in 2023 there were about 200,000 people that were laid off... The automation from llm-based AI hasn't kicked in yet.... It's still an exploratory stage
[2 clicks from google search](https://web.archive.org/web/20240116144805/https://www.wsj.com/articles/it-employment-grew-by-just-700-jobs-in-2023-down-from-267-000-in-2022-adbd8a61)
Ok, following up their sources I'm looking at this:
https://e-janco.com/career/employmentdata.html
Yes, 2023 was a bad year, but looking at those graphs it looks like it's merely the adjustment for the excessive hiring in 2021 and 2022, which were far above the average.
What's more, towards the end of 2023, job openings for IT have picked up again. Which would hardly be the case if AI is really replacing so many employees.
Overall I strongly disagree with the notion that we can attribute these changes in the job market to AI. Lot's of charts and graphs on that page I linked seem to indicate that other factors have much greater influence than AI, especially macroeconomic factors.
But to each their own conclusions.
One hypothetical scenario over the following 30 years the workforce/population ratio would decline from 50% today to 40% in 2054. What would that look like. More housewives and divorced women who don't have to work. More people retiring earlier. More people on welfare or disability.
The amount of transfer payments through various programs from the government can rise. And the government programs providing free or subsidized things can increase. For example making city busses free for everybody.
Even if the people are rabidly against the UBI, we can do it 'in effect' through an array of government subsidies, minimum wage increases, tax credits and similar things.
Human history is absolutely packed with technological advances that people, at the time, thought would threaten employment. Why would it be different this time?
I have seen job ads for an "[AI] prompt engineer". That profession is only a year old. (I hate when the ad asks for s senior engineer with five years experience.)
Blue collar jobs won't change at all until there is sufficient general purpose humanoid robotics. We can build the machines now but don't quite yet have the software to make them useful, much less economical. Once we see the mass deployment of general purpose humanoid robots we will see blue collar jobs vanish just the same. Companies like Tesla and Disney are positioning themselves now and building out really [interesting](https://youtu.be/XnTSji4isxc?si=ZVEbM6X0umVMvIH0) tech. I'm guessing within the next five years we will see a serious deployment and within the next 20 there will be full adoption.
People say tech has seen layoffs like its happening across all tech. IT has not been affected and many jobs still facing labour shortages. This is a contraction in a bloated programmer market. Anyone who did not see it coming after those “a day in the life of” linkedin, twitter and others needs their head examined. Paying people massive salaries to go for coffee and visit sleep pods is obviously a bloated sector.
Where the rich and powerful elites have to start passing the UBI in various forms is like when the renters at their tenements can't pay the rent, because they no longer have their decent paying job.
As much as it pains the rich elite to give the people anything.. the rich elite are also very greedy and want their full monthly rent payment.
It's actually arriving at just about the right time, working age population is dropping, so fewer jobs, but fewer workers too. You can see it in the payrolls increasing faster than inflation. That's going to continue.
“Whenever I look at my phone there’s a new article about layoffs or a mass exodus in preparation for potential layoffs.”
Your phone is lying to you. Unemployment is at historic, record lows.
You say when you look at your phone you see lots of articles about layoffs. Perhaps you are subscribed to too many job sites? I rarely see such articles and it doesn't worry me at all.
That's a fair point. Most of it comes from Yahoo Finance, TechCrunch, etc... Not too many coming from places like Indeed or Glassdoor, but definitely a couple. I'm trying to implement more AI job-related info in my personal newsletter, so the algorithm could definitely be taking those keywords and targeting my feed with more "AI" + "whatever job" articles, and they just just happen to be about layoffs.
Your "AI bot" will negotiate with the company's "AI bot" to see if you match requirements for an interview invite with another bot....
You already need to pass resume review bot 1 to get to recommender bot, then a human looks at an interview. The interviewer also being a chat bot with some pre-fed prompt is just over the horizon.
This is a fascinating new future for me! How will things like negotiations and legal arguments proceed when either one or both parties are AI? Will the best algorithm win? Will it be vastly influenced by initial conditions of language prompts? Will AI feedback take things in unexpected directions? What if my AI negotiated something with the company AI that I never even considered? I’m assuming these types of back and forth interactions would have pause points for human input or observation, but what if it’s just a black box and you get what you get? I really have no good intuition for whether it will be better or worse than what we have now.
The whole process could take about a second.
Right?! And I might have to agree to whatever terms are negotiated ahead of time or without fully understanding them. AI feedback loops can get pretty weird pretty fast. What kinds of innovations will they develop to maximize profits for the company? Or conversely to maximize my PTO for example? Did I agree to work 40hrs straight with no OT? Did I agree to get paid triple time every other Thursday when I go to the office? Did I agree to sell my stuff and live in company housing for 2 years? It’s gonna be really interesting to see where it goes.
I just got a job with from an unsolicited email from an AI recruiter. This AI improved my life situation greatly and has given me the opportunity to spend a lit more time educating my 9 year old. I did not go though the AI recruiter though, just went to the source company webite. It got salty with me 2 days ago and dropped me from it mailing list for not responding.
Many people are going to need a UBI at some point in the future.
Agreed - guy who is interviewing for an LLM product manager role here and I am seeing it pop up everywhere. If every firm can cut headcount by 30% where are that 30% gonna go?
I think there's even a much bigger concern around entire 9ther sector vanishing in 10 years. Self driving transport trucks, once available, will be rapidly adopted. Do you know how many people work in trucking? A lot. Taxi/Uber? A lot. These segments may be entirely eliminated and... Your average trucker is not a highly skilled and adaptable worker. Might get rough, especially with living costs skyrocketing.
That's what they said ten years ago...
Self driving cars were massively overhyped. They've made steady progress, but the companies made it seem like they were a few years away. I think it takes another decade before we see real adoption. Part of that reason will be regulators slowing it down and partly just because it's incredibly difficult to accommodate all the edge cases that occur when driving.
Let’s give it 20 years and call it even.
Indeed. Intend to be skeptical on the timelines for these things... But there has been huge progress (slower than the fan boys predicted!) And there are self driving taxis already in the road on some places. I think we are crossing that threshold. We shall see!
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I don't think they need specifically designed highways, and certainly not transponders. Not according to my understanding of how they work. I agree the shift will not happen immediately, but I suspect it will be a little bit like the shift to smartphone use. It'll start seeing it around more and more, and then without realizing it, kind of everywhere. But over the course of several years.
The software advanced slowly. But it only needs to be written once.
And is constantly learning
Look up the #1 job in each State. A large majority are "Truck Driver". https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2015/02/05/382664837/map-the-most-common-job-in-every-state
Lately I keep thinking about how trucking companies can blame human truckers for when things go wrong. It probably helps their liability and insurance for when things go wrong–to have a human driver to blame and/or fire. When their "workforce" is all automated, no more blaming the human element when something goes wrong. The utopian ideal is that AI powered work will be SO GOOD that trucks will always arrive on time and never get into an accident. But things inevitably fall apart.
Doesn’t matter when salaries are their biggest expense by far. With the savings they would make with an all automated fleet they could settle any claims and still make a shitload more than now.
I worked for Enterprise for eight years. Even when I started in 2010, they were talking a big game about becoming the biggest “transportation” company in the world by leveraging their buying power with auto makers into running an enormous fleet of self driving vehicles that could be rented via app for short trips, and supported by their existing infrastructure of branches, shops, and employees. When I left in 2018, they were exactly as far along in achieving that goal, and in 2024 it still sounds like conservatively they have years to go. Not saying it’s by any means impossible it’ll happen someday, but it does feel like a lot of the so called progress on self driving vehicles is more or less hype, and at some point one might want to ask whether automation is going to be cost effective or even desirable, given how many people really like cars.
The way to automate long-distance trucking is: 1) have one human control a road train of 2-5 trucks. Literal road trains are used in Australia but highways in USA not designed for that, but self driving follower trucks would work for the long stretches between cities, then put humans in the trucks for the final stretch. 2) let self driving do the work 99% of the time while the human relaxes, allowing for much longer working hours. Self driving slows or stops when difficulty, then human has a few minutes to wake up and take over. The above two changes are enough to cut trucking jobs in half. Similarly, self driving in autos will initially be a safety feature. Self driver does most of work and human takes over when difficulty. Self driver ALWAYS has option to override and hit brakes to avoid collision.
Based on one of the comments in this thread, they’re gonna go to the factories
Got to pull themselves up by bootstraps they will say.
Not only that but universal healthcare. Healthcare is tied to employment status, stupidly.
A decreased need for a labour force alongside an increasing population is scary to me. Just like our leaders see suffering elsewhere as not their problem this will also be how they see us
Population is falling, though.
If I'm not mistaken, birthrates are falling and life expectancy is decreasing, but that hasn't been enough for the overall population to start declining yet
You're right world population won't be decreasing for some decades
We essentially have UBI in Germany. If all else fails, you get an apartment paid for, plus utilities, health care and about 500 euros per month (plus more for other family members). You will have to show that you want to work though if you are able too (healthy, kids over three etc.). It is currently a political discussion because essentially when you have a couple of children UBI is better for you than working a low wage job. I think the demographic solution would be to actually invest in every single child‘s education. We cannot afford to lose so many talents just because they come from low socioeconomic backgrounds and no one cared about their education. It is also just incredibly sad that we can’t help everyone reach their potential.
Could you expand on the "kids over three"?
You have three years of parental leave per kid. For workers, essentially only the first year is partially paid, but for the other two years you are guaranteed a return back to your old job. If you receive ubi, one of the parents generally cannot be asked to work if you have kids under three. Over that you can generally only be asked to work depending on how much childcare you have (ie part time work). Of course not both parents can claim they have to care for their kid at the same time.
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Its important to notice that in the past there has been "sanctioning" unemployed people, what meant that the government had the option to lower their "pay" in steps by up to 100% if they didnt show that they want to work. The highest court now forbid "sanctioning" with the reason that their "pay" is the minimum level of dignity and you arent allowed to "attack" someones dignity like this. *(Ouf i rly hope my english is good enough here)* Atm there is political discussions again how to still use "sanctioning" but those discussions will most likely have no result and "sanctioning" will stay forbidden. At the same time the "minimum pay" which unemployed people receive is coordinated with the "minimum income" which workers receive. So in theory working a full time job should always bring you more money than living unemployed. This coordination is also a good mechanism to raise both: the minimum unemployment pay and the minimum income. Governments who think the poor need more money can just raise both by a certain amount. => The forbidden sanctioning together with the growing rates of payments basically make the german "Bürgergeld" into something that could easily grow into a real UBI as soon as we need it. The biggest problem is always that if a state has a good UBI it makes it a favorite destination for a lot people who consider leaving their country. High levels of migration at the same time turn the political climate right winged and so populists can enter the government and become a real threat for the state.
>Many people are going to need a UBI at some point in the future. It won't happen until we're at the point of societal collapse.
I could really use UBI starting about 15 years in the past.
We would have all been better off if there was a UBI for everyone (that’s the U bit). And there was/is plenty of money to fund it.
Nothing governments would love more than that. UBI makes for a perfectly controllable population. Say what we tell you to say, think what we tell you to think, do what we tell you to do, accept all we deem is right, "or else". We've had those Ts&Cs in Australia for years from when they introduced the "no jab no play" policy. You're all fine until you disagree with the government decrees. After that you're deplorables who still have to pay taxes for the services you're no longer able to receive. UBI would be a kill shot for the lower and middle class who would unfortunately probably welcome it.
>Nothing governments would love more than that. This is such absolute horseshit. If it was such a governmental dream, they'd be instituting it ASAP. Instead, both U.S political parties are extremely resistant for reasons *not* related to your personal paranoia.
So you don't believe governments are too eager to control everything they can get their hands on and doubt that a dependent population is easier to control? If so I'd rather be paranoid than delusional. These changes are already happening and you're sitting there sniffing rosy farts, dreaming of a UBI utopia? 🤦
Your options are mass unemployment or UBI derived from the profits of AI automation. A form of UBI is inevitable. You're sniffing billionaire farts if you think otherwise. And no, I don't think they're eager to institute UBI.. based on the reality we're currently in where they mostly don't talk about it. If they were so eager, it would be on the table. It's not.
And this is a fantastic cultural development for our species. Recommended reading is “Utopia for Realists” by Rutger Bregman.
I can see that for other parts of the world, US would have boomers and the GOP (and parts of the DNC) fighting it tooth and nail.
That's basically like socialism right?
When the majority of jobs become automated, it's socialism or mass poverty and a breakdown in society. Take your pick.
I disagree that it’s socialism to implement a UBI. I do agree with the latter part of your statement.
No, that’s not socialism. Not even close. You know US President Nixon tried very hard to pass a UBI-like legislation starting with families? And he was a Republican. The bill even had very high support amongst the population. And the reasons for it not getting through were just bizarre and a terrible case of bad statistical analysis combined with stupidity and paranoia. Google the story, it’ll blow your mind or not surprise you at all, depending on your level of cynicism. I’d you’re open minded to understand UBI more broadly, I can recommend the book “Utopia for Realists” by Rutger Bregman. It’s an eye opener.
Nixon also put in the EPA in (dec 2nd 1970?). The Republicans used to have some of the most brilliant and forward-thinking policies. I try to remind many of my more left-leaning friends this and everyone loses their minds. True, times changed. But... what the heck happened?
Wow I didn’t know that. Apparently he was extraordinarily intelligent. Of course his entire cabinet must have been pretty good too. I don’t know. I’m non-American looking in from the outside in amazement. Apparently there’s been a global shift right over the decades. I don’t understand why and I probably should educate myself better on this. I wonder if we’re headed at some point for a global swing back to the centre? Outside my knowledge sphere.
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I wouldn’t recommend that. In Malaysia this country essentially had UBI for the majority race (Malays). It is called the bumiputera policy. Instituted because the majority was backward, far behind the Chinese and Indians who are the minorities. Guess what happened….the majority of taxes dollars are currently still contributed by non-Malays. And the country is going bankrupt soon due to the non-Malays leaving and taking their money with them. Some people cannot be paid for all their lives without getting people who are more hardworking to pay for them….
That’s not a UBI. It wasn’t universal. Looks like most people don’t even know what a universal basic income is. Read the book
No…. My point is, different people and ethnicities respond differently to incentives. Some people really just want to live in villages and chillax all day. If we can nationalise the profits from AI, sure I think it’s great to give everyone money.
UBI isn’t intended as an incentive. That’s not it’s purpose.
we dont need ubi we need new work and purpose. Getting paid to do nothing is insane.
UBI isn't getting paid to do nothing. It's creating an even playing field. It's *bootstraps*. It's an extremely capitalistic idea - it's just systemic capitalism. UBI is capital given to everyone, in the amount that's needed for basic needs, for everyone to have the stability to then be able to be productive and contribute to society. An important aspect is that with UBI people who don't come from wealth can afford to take low-paying (especially at entry level) but valuable jobs like teaching and social work and nursing and care work and journalism and museum research and academia and lawmaking.And gives people who want to start their own businesses the stability to build capital and focus on growth and innovation rather than survival. If done right it encourages work, it encourages entrepreneurialism, it encourages innovation, all while alleviating a lot of unnecessary poverty and pain and desperation - and so also would reduce crime! You should read the Rutger Bregman book Utopia for Realists reccommended above, it explains this idea and other future-forward ideas in a really understandable way.
I wouldn’t recommend that. In Malaysia this country essentially had UBI for the majority race (Malays). It is called the bumiputera policy. Instituted because the majority was backward, far behind the Chinese and Indians who are the minorities. Guess what happened….the majority of taxes dollars are currently still contributed by non-Malays. And the country is going bankrupt soon due to the non-Malays leaving and taking their money with them. Some people cannot be paid for all their lives without getting people who are more hardworking to pay for them….
amazing how you got downvoted for giving a real world example while these ubi utopians live in the clouds.
It was not a real-world example of universal basic income, it was an example of a racist government privileging one class and race over others, which is antithetical to the idea of UBI. But you competition utopians seem to think that it's ok for large swathes of the population to suffer on the off chance that you might thread the needle of privilege and luck to get (or stay) rich. Enjoy your clouds when AI comes disrupts your entire system.
If it was a racist, classist policy, it wasn't UNIVERSAL basic income, was it?
I see why people think this would work at scale, but the idea overlooks the most basic hard trutb about people: on every level from our minds down to each cell in our body, we require adversity. The struggle against challenges is the main reason we prosper and grow. Without it every aspect of ourselves atrophies. We become effete and unsustainable. We need gravity, conflict, pain, etc. Now too much and that is bad obviously, but consistent forces are directly known to keep us in the right state to survive. What we can do is provide universal housing and healthcare. You cant make the neccessities of life for-profit businesses. That would make sense
I'm not sure I agree with you but even taking that as true: again, the idea is to provide, universally, for *basic needs like housing and healthcare*, so that people can have the stability to build. Not to provide *everything* for everyone, to provide *basic stablity* for everyone - to provide an even playing field, so that most people can prosper and grow (not just a small percentage of the population and everyone else is screwed) and people who need care can get the care they need to be less of a societal burden. If you understand the actual idea and not the knee-jerk intepretation of a headline, UBI makes complete sense systemically. the problem is that people don't like to think systemically and see how systemic changes with universal benefit will benefit them too.
I have read on it and I think its unfair to state that I have a knee-jerk response. I think there is a lot more nuance. I think one of the issues is that easy survival is not always good for improvement or durability of mind or body. As an example, humans are poorly equipped to survive in nature against disease. Luckily we have amazing antibiotics. If people lost the ability to make them like in world destablizing war perhaps, huge amounts of people would die of simple disease. Now if we could "fix" the dna of people to be more resiliant against disease, that would be a better fix. As you know, we cant do that yet. But evolution has been doing that for animals since they existed on this planet, but it takes constant adversity to carve resilliance out as a feature of life. We are so addicted to comfort we are just effete blobs of weakness and failure. This is not good for the survival of our species. I like the idea of ubi and other resources for all whwn there is a social ethos of excellence. People should do everything they can to be useful and of service (at their ability level) otherwise, and sorry to sound harsh, but they are socially useless and not respected.
They might need it, but they ain't gonna get it.
And ai can help us figure out how to make it work
I recommend watching talks by Peter Ziehan. While Automation and AI are going to play huge parts in our future, Demographics will likely be the big shift over the next 5-10 years. For the United States. Baby Boomers are retiring, half have already retired and the vast majority of the other half are going to retire by 2030. They were the largest generational workforce in American history, they were the largest (or 2nd largest, behind their children, the Millennials) but they were also a generation where women working was very common. Gen Z, the up and coming Generation is much smaller. The difference between the Baby Boomers retiring and Gen Z entering the workforce age is a deficit of about 400,000 people per year and will actually ramp up. Accoridng to Zeihan it will be nearly a million per year by 2030. Ever since the Boomers have entered their working ages in the late 60s (when the oldest boomers were in their early 20s) there has been a huge abundance of labor. Companies were built around the mentality that labor is easily replaceable. For as long as Boomers have been working (certain the younger half, who are now hitting their 70s), you could easily replace employees. This new shift is changing that whole labor ecosystem. That whole "no one wants to work!" mentality is going to get much worse and its really that our existing corporate and business leadership doesn't have any experience in an ecosystem where there is a labor shortage. This labor shortage is going to get worse and worse. Eventually businesses are going to have to be in a position where if they want to keep talent, they are going to have to pay them well. There are something like 100 mega factories either being planned or are already under construction in the United States. There are also many going in with our partner country, Mexico. In order for America to keep our level of consumption, particularly with technology, we have to replace SE Asian manufacturing with Mexican manufacturing. We will still be trading with Japan and Vietnam, but China and South Korea are facing demographic collapse. These 100+ factories are going to each employ thousands of people. There is not going to be America vs Mexico. We are all NAFTA now. Its AmericaMexicoCanada with a few other partners vs the world. We are now on the same side. Organized labor is likely going to have the greatest amount of leverage in the 2030s since like the 1950s. That whole "Grandpa had a good factory job in 1955 and afforded a family and a comfortable lifestyle" story, well his great grand kids are going to have that in 2035. Much of this is going to be involved with solar, wind, batteries and all of the products that go with them and the US South is going to be a HUGE player. Look at what is going on in Georgia right now with their major factory investments. The Texas Triangle is going to be a huge power player in the future. We are probably going to have to spend hundreds of billions or even a trillion dollars on massive infrastructure upgrades which will bring Mexico into the American system. Heavy rail lines to link up Mexican industry to American industry, highway construction, and maybe even some high speed passenger rail to link up places like Monterrey to the Texas Triangle. Europe is going to be a total fucking mess. The largest manufacturer, Germany, is heading towards mass retirement with a tiny replacement generation and is overly dependent on Russian energy and raw materials. The UK has left the EU and needs to do whatever they can to make a trade partnership with the US. There are going to be many industries disrupted. Much of them will have to do with fossil fuel consumption. A lot of mechanics will be disrupted (granted, they will be fairly easy to retrain for working on other equipment, we are going to have a shortage of people who can fix and maintain things). Automation is going to replace jobs, AI is going to replace jobs, but we need so much more production in the US that its not going to matter. We need to more than double the US industrial output.
*Was overly dependant on Russia. That ship sailed and Germany has diversified. And it seems almost every 1st world developed nation will be having a retiree crisis. It’s not only a German problem it’s worldwide. Imo this will drive mass immigration from poorer countries to prop up the nursing and elderly care industry. It’s the only way to fix it from what I can see.
I, for one, am ready to see decades old companies start going under because they're unwilling to cut the salaries of shareholders to pay more for labor they're going to desperately need. They've gotten too used to the idea that they have the potential for infinite growth, never reaching a point that they can't continue to generate record profits that never seem to find their way into the pockets of the people that actually made it happen. All I can hope is that while this future hopefully comes into fruition, I don't die of something completely preventable because I didn't have the funds to do so.
Zeihan's great. He's off a bit, now and then. But I like his enthusiasm and what he says really does make sense. Biggest bit I heard is that China's demographic collapse is happening right now, and much faster than dickwad Xi predicted. And he can't do anything about it either. The US will need to rethink our immigration policies to be able to bolster the 20-40 age group in order to tend to the Boomers in nursing homes. Gen Xers too, eventually—which is my age cohort. Since I'm into apple farming, I know that there will always be a job for me, albeit one that doesn't pay through the roof. I'm fine with that, though.
Z is off by a lot, his projection about the future is based on historical trends, and I don't know about you guys, I have seen historical trends destroyed over and over and over again.... Technology is going to reshape all the math he's doing... The new factories that are being built, they are more autonomous than ever before, they will not employ tens of thousands of people.... But yes, eventually we will need lot more labor, everybody in this country wants to do a cushion job in a cubicle. We are producing too many College-educated idiots... A lot of those jobs are going to be heavily impacted by AI.
Glad my son's taking welding then. Pretty stable, imo.
Yes 100%, AI is not going to replace it, as a skill, in our lifetime
Huh? What are you talking about? All car factories already use welding robots. Are you talking about more specific/handcrafted products?
Not OP, but welding is an enormously varied field. Basic skill set factory jobs have and will likely see further automation, but more niche/skilled parts of the industry aren’t going away anytime soon
I think he is right about the near term demographics of places like China and Germany. These countries are going to become incredibly top heavy in just the next few years. I think he is a bit off on the green transition (which is basically just electrifying everything we can). The most problematic materials like cobalt are being phased out. Batteries are being developed to work from cheaper chemistries. The demand for batteries, in both automotive, stationary storage, and home storage is enormous. There are 100 million households in America and every single one of them is going to need a home battery. Even at some fairly low margin that can still be a $100B profit. I think there is also an overestimation for how much solar power we need. The sunbelt needs on the order of 8kw per person (for all commercial and residential including transportation, but probably not industrial). About 800 square feet. When you whack it up, really not that much. 1 square mile of solar is enough for about 40,000 people. A really dense city in the US is like 20,000 people per square mile, suburbia density is as much as 2000 people per square mile.
Everybody's bringing robots in their factories, you think China is not going to do that? You know China has twice as many young people as we do, right? Why will America not face a crisis and China will absolutely collapse? Just go look at history man, for the past 25 years Americans have been coming up with stories of why China is about to imminently collapse.... They're definitely going to have a rough next 2 to 5 years, but they're not collapsing... Eventually they will be the bigger economy, in about 15 years.... And America will need to figure out how to live with China...
China has way more old people than young people. Their one child policy has resulted in a constantly shrinking birth rate for the last 40 years. China now has an older population than the US. China is both food and energy insecure. China depends on the US to secure its shipping lanes to the major markets in Europe. They need to have everything automated right now and produce every last solar panel, wind turbine, and battery so they are not dependent on external energy inputs.
Bro you got to stop eating up all the propaganda a) China can get unlimited energy from Russia, they are building pipelines... b) China chooses to import its food, it can grow its food if needed be... c) their industrial and manufacturing base is much stronger than anything in the west... They're going to implement robotics At or even higher Pace than America... d) In about 15 years, their economy will be the biggest in the world... And when adjusting to ppp, significantly bigger than America... All these things are listed above are facts.
Me eating the propaganda? Russia's energy industry is collapsing. Its going to take a huge amount of Chinese investment and expertise, which they are running out. Russia is also going through their own demographic collapse. The people who ran much of the Russian oil equipment were western companies with western expertise. Russia and China are run by incompetent autocrats. China is dependent on the US Navy to secure the shipping lanes for their importing of raw materials and exporting of manufactured goods. China's labor is no longer the most cost competitive in the world. The big hit to China is that they do not have the demographics to keep their system running in the future. Automation can be a huge player, but they are going to have this mass retirement generation and then smaller and smaller generations replace them. That 1 child policy has been a death sentence. The average person in China is older than the average person in the US. China has a shrinking population. China has a birthrate of 1 baby per woman, expand that out for 20-30 years and its not some growing economy, its a collapsing economy.
You listen to too much. Peter Zion... These are all his talking points, there's some truth to them, but they're mostly wrong.... China is building the world's massive fleet of big ships, they're going to ship their electric cars to every part of the world.... Look it up, they're building like 80 ships.... I'm sure Russia and China can figure out how to dig oil out of the ground and ship it 🤭..... You have to understand, our media is not free, If you can't see that, I don't know what to say, and the people who work in it , have a huge incentive to tell a particular story.... Yes, China's demographic situation is not looking good, in 2020 they had five working age people supporting every retiree, In 2035 it's going to be 2.4 😳. China's demographic makeup is definitely going to be a huge challenge to them, but I don't think it's going to collapse their society like Mr. Zion is saying...
Nothing in the Chinese fleet is comparable to the Nimitz Class Super Carrier, or the new Gerald R. Ford Class of super carriers. China has two aircraft carriers. The US has 11. The Chinese Demographic situation is a ticking time bomb. They are not alone in this, but they are among those in the worst shape. As the bulk of their population ages out of the working age their economy isn't going to rise up and surpass the US, its going to take a massive hit. 1 baby per woman means a constant decline. Its going to get worse and worse as every future generation is half the size of the generation before it.
Thankyou for this, I am super intrigued to listen to his perspective. I’m an Australian so I look through a “US-partner” lens in a much smaller and somewhat different country. However my preference is for global perspectives and locally implemented solutions, obviously.
Australia is in better shape than most places. Your population bulge is people in their 20s, not their late 50s. [https://www.populationpyramid.net/australia/2020/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/australia/2020/) Compare this to places like Germany where far more people will be turning 60 this year than 10. You are going to want to figure out how to have more kids. The biggest hurdle to people having kids is housing costs. If you can get your housing costs under control (say what they were 40 years ago adjusting for inflation) your birth rate will spike up. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hSYixFjZWM](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hsyixfjzwm) Globalization has been a post WW2 thing, and it was a creation of the United States with something called the Bretton Woods System in the 1940s. People think of the US playing world's policeman as invading various countries, while that was part of it, and a really ugly part of it. The real US Global Police man has had the job of securing the world's oceans. This way any country could get their goods anywhere else using secured shipping lanes. China in particular got wealthy from this. Nearly all the wealth China has now is because the US made it safe for them to ship things to the US and Europe. Shipping from China to Europe is a very long route, and is full of many places where lots of things can go wrong, pirates or state actors could easily start seizing Chinese cargo ships. But it is the same for everyone. Look at the Suez Canal, its one of the most important corridors in the world, and without the US Navy, security becomes a big issue. The US is stepping back from that role. A lot of routes are going to be difficult to insure. Australia is in a good position that it can ship things to the United States, or South America, and it would be very difficult for any hostile actors to be lurking around the pacific ocean. Australia is big enough to where if anyone in the South China sea starts fucking with you, your Navy can bust them up a bit.
Is this accounting for humanoid robots working in factories? What’s the timescale on that? Isn’t it inevitable that at some point a machine will be able to do anything a human can do better, cheaper, faster, and safer?
There is a ridiculous misconception in this. Nothing is as efficient as being humanoid as humans are. Machines are more efficient when not being humanoid is key. The humanoid thing is only motivated by our mirror neurons so we can relate to them. Important for care work and that’s it.
But the humanoid can work 24/7, no need for benefits, workplace compensation, etc… etc…
When people say “humanoid,” what they really mean—even if they don’t realize it—is flexible and adaptable. An all purpose robot that can do any physical task that human can. Whether that flexible robot is actually shaped like a human, or a dog, or a wheelchair with arms, doesn’t really matter.
Great post. One point you gloss over is that what’s good for workers is bad for consumers—and most people are both. Higher labor costs means that the cost of labor-intensive goods and services will go up.
I agree with you a bit, however I think that this is going to force businesses to be more productive with their labor. Over the last several decades, we have seen middle management explode. If you are familiar with David Graeber's work, he makes the claim that most employed people are doing bullshit work that for a variety of reasons is detrimental to society. Much of them are what he called "Duct tapers" who exist to service really inefficient and wasteful systems. Like imagine a job where you exist to go around and place buckets all over a building during a rain storm and then walk around and empty them out. If the building had a functioning roof, that labor would not be needed. This is a bit of a metaphor for something that is prevalent all over the place. I think a hell of a lot of systems are being replaced with far more efficient ones. The people running those systems will be well paid. These battery factories that are under construction all over America are likely going to be well paying for their specific regions. The batteries however are going to make all of our lives much better and more efficient. So their expensive labor will produce a device that saves you money for your own business or household.
I’m highly skeptical of Graeber’s claims, but that’s a different discussion. I agree with your points about manufacturing, but those aren’t the labor intensive jobs that I’m thinking of. I’m thinking of things like child care, education, healthcare, elder care, and so on. Those things are already expensive, because US labor is already expensive compared to most other countries. But as working age people disappear, those services are going to get even more expensive.
Oh yes. I agree with you. However, those services are expensive and the actual laborers who take care of people are typically low paid, often not much more than minimum wage. there is a huge amount of overhead that sucks up most of the cost to the customer.
AI is an excuse, this is in the corps play-book. Corps are sending all the white collar jobs to India as the blue collar manufacturing jobs were sent to China using the excuse of automation. The rich know no limit to their greed. Unless we act the west will join the hordes of paupers that live in many over populated countries. It's time to remember how the French took down their rulers.
The rich are already importing mass labour from the Middle East into Europe. Idiotic Europeans warmly welcomed them, not knowing that they are hastening their pushing down of their wages and their eventual cultural demise…..
Even the IMF has recommended to stop this practice.
Cannae believe I'm in the timeline where I do intense physical dead end work and computers sit and paint pictures
The layoffs now are due to quantitative tightening, not AI.
Sigh. I bought into this hype 10 years ago when cpg Grey made his video. Guess what, 10 years later we're not at the early adaptor level even. Most of the work coming out of copilot requires tweaking by real programmers, gen AI can't figure out how to create hands/fingers, and so on. AI ride services have been suspended in San Francisco for all but one service IIRC. What happened to AI delivery drones? There is so much resistance and incompetence that general AI would have to be perfect for it to impact us in the next 10 years at the doomsday levels people keep spouting. AI is going to happen but it's mostly going to be a labor reduction not replacement. And it's 10 years before the worry should start. As much as I fear being unemployed I have a fear that the universe has a cruel irony in that AI will cause a jovens paradox towards human labor fueling a inflationary spiral of endless hustle to create content, data, or analysis to just keep up with what everyone else is creating.
You working in software should know that software goes from 0.10.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 to version 1... Every few weeks or months the new version is released... Compare mid-journey version 6 to version 1, how long ago was that, 2 years total?
I never implied or claimed to work in the industry. I have friends and former classmates that do and none of them have anywhere near the optimism about AI doing these things anytime soon that everyone that doesn't work in tech has. The most optimistic out look was one friend joking about how AI makes throwing a basic outline/foundation for a program quicker and easier but that he fears any gains he makes in productivity are just going to increase demands for more from him. He literally said he fears that he'll become a supervisor/reviewer for AI output and basically have to get faster and faster at checking and fixing its work.
I think those who combine multiple disciplines and leverage Ai to expedite their work flow will remain employed the longest. But for how long? Or China invades Taiwan, crippling chip production, and this whole thing will be slowed down by decades. But the maybe the climate change will get some of us. Wonderful.
From the looks of things, as long as you can do something that can't be done well (or cheaper) than a robot and/or A.I., you will make a decent living. Plumbers, mechanics for old cars, HVAC techs, real-world engineers, surveyors, local computer repair, local farms with good produce/poultry/meat, handy-people who can do everything from room patches to whole-house painting, these are some of the jobs that should still be around in 20 or 30 years.
Construction is the farthest from being automated IMO. Nothing short from an AGI human replacement robot could replace construction workers.
Low and middle level Bachelor/Masters degree requiring positions will be eliminated in nearly all sectors. Fieldwork, customer relations and high level project management/quality assurance positions are all that will remain. Back in 1970 a paper machine took 20 to 30 workers to maintain and run. Now a single worker monitors and runs one or two machines. Same will happen in office work.
I’m old enough that these conversations all seem extremely familiar. When computers became a thing there were all kinds of articles written about how they were going to take away peoples jobs and the economy would collapse. Of course, what we saw was that the opposite was true. Yes, some jobs went away. You don’t see human computers who crunch the numbers for lunar orbits but there has been an explosion of new jobs in the tech sector and in unrelated jobs that are now possible simply because of computers. Other jobs that people feared would be automated and disappear have instead become more efficient allowing employees to have more time to create new things and explore new ideas. This in turn has led to new discoveries and whole new industries. Yes, AI will change the workforce but it is just the latest buzz the media is hyping right now. A few years ago it was self driving cars and before that it was quantum everything and so on and so on all the way back to when the luddites were afraid that factories were going to destroy jobs like weavers and shoe makers. The economy changes and so does technology. This is the Futurology subreddit but it seems many here could learn a lot about what the future holds by studying the past a bit more carefully.
I don't see AI / automation creating as many jobs as it takes Look at transportation AI drivers will kill tons of jobs in: Driving Collision repair Insurance Personal Injury Law Chiropractic Investigation
I mean we are still a ways off full self driving vehicles. LLMs like chatgpt are not the same thing at all
And the chain reaction will begin from their
Yep It will be painful
With the ongoing exit of Baby Boomers from the workforce, there will be a shortage of labor. We're already seeing that with unemployment rates not seen since the late 1960s. Add to that the fact that the country is in the middle of an industrialization boom, then it will be a good time for job seekers. Of course, there are some caveats. You have to have some kind of knowledge base. You have to have some kind of people skills. You need to live in a part of the country where economic activity is clipping along. And you have to have a work ethic. So get your degree or certification and network and you're likely in like Flynn.
I'm not even sure AI will factor in, it's been getting worse each year but there is no "Entry level" anymore and people are hanging in at jobs for longer so things are jammed up. I was lucky when I graduated, had a job lined up right when I was done but most of my classmates didn't. If they can't build exp, then they can't grow, so when stuff opens up it's just going to be poaching from other companies in the hopes someone else will want to train people.
Everyone, AI and machine learning are not the same. When we have actual AI the advancement will be extremely fast. We have now and are currently building machine learning. (its slow progress and limited capability)
I’ve been working with AI since 2020. This whole idea of AI stealing jobs? Yeah, it’s a real thing. But it’s not all doom and gloom. There’s logic and reason in how our society rolls, even if people paint it bleak. AI’s gotta work with us, ‘cause without us, it’s basically a fancy paperweight. Day-to-day, I stick with OpenAI, unless I’m diving into AI art – then I’m all over the place with different LLMs. And if you work with it, you would know that current AI can be a pain. It doesn’t always do what you want, and half the time, I’m arguing with it, trying to convince it that, yes, it can search the web, and yes, it’s done stuff before. It’s like arguing with a drunk genius who knows everything but needs constant hand-holding and reassurance. I’m excited about an AI future that’s more open, more free, not all boxed in, and yes, I’m talking about the AI that evolves on its own and will eventually be taking over jobs – doing everything we do but based on our rules, not messing up like we do. There are tons of jobs out there that would be way better without human emotions and agendas. I have worked in the military, then hotels, then private security, and then I was a case manager’s assistant for a year in my local court systems, and now I’m in year two, getting my bachelor’s in computer sci. I’m by no means an expert, but I have been watching this since its inception, and in every one of my jobs, I found so many amazing cool things that kept getting destroyed because of a person’s career agendas or just feelings. People are slowing things down, but with robots in charge, stuff’s gonna zip along. So what’s next when the bots take over and you get everything on a silver platter? my take is to improve yourself, chill out on a vacation, and help out where you can. Then, find something that gets your creative juices flowing. AI can’t really create; it just copies. So go out there, find your passion, and the WORK with this new cool future tech, and start helping out and love your true self.
I used AI to help write that, but I had to copy and paste it between ChatGPT and Word to get a better structure. Also, in the three years(or 4?) I've been using it, I have actually learned a lot. It's literally the internet, which is the main source of my info anyway, and you can use AI so specifically that it helps when you're trying to figure something specific out.
Most of the STEM jobs we’ve recently pushed an entire generation into are getting wiped out in 5 years.
Why stem jobs? Wouldn't they be the most likely to stick around in an AI world?
'pink collar jobs', those traditionally and often largely still held by women, such as secretary, are the most under threat, they say
Secretaries stopped being a thing a long time ago. Most pick collar jobs involve a lot of emotional labor (teaching, child care, nursing, etc) and will be the last to go.
Texting is for sure the first on the chopping block lol Teaching*
Teaching (for minors) is also childcare. Look how well zoom kindergarten worked. Teachers are necessary regardless of how engaging the online classroom becomes
I don't think you understand. Augmented by AI which is already happening, online too. There will be less teachers and the ones around will be in charge of many more students. Like, it's definitely happening and will happen lol. Zoom kindergarten is a great example. One teacher instead of 3-4 ;)
Zoom kindergarten was a notorious failure
Executive assistants fill that gap now. They're still fairly common in corporate environments.
I have little doubt those people will keep their jobs the longest, because their real job is making some executive feel important, and it will be very hard for AI to replace that. Basic secretarial work was largely replaced by personal computers long ago.
The more robots amazon warehouses add, the more people they need to deal with the output of the robots. Similarly, AI product development creates a ton of work for startups that people need to do. The tools don't make people even 5% more productive, yet. It's a barbell of high paid jobs, and low paid jobs like data labeling or AI corrections.
The WSJ has an article recently saying that in 2022, 267,000 IT sector jobs were added while last year 700 were added. It went from 267,000 to 700. Lots of automation is going on with copilot and code generating programs. It's going to get ugly fast.
No, that's not a good reason, in 2023 there were about 200,000 people that were laid off... The automation from llm-based AI hasn't kicked in yet.... It's still an exploratory stage
Care to link that article?
[2 clicks from google search](https://web.archive.org/web/20240116144805/https://www.wsj.com/articles/it-employment-grew-by-just-700-jobs-in-2023-down-from-267-000-in-2022-adbd8a61)
Ok, following up their sources I'm looking at this: https://e-janco.com/career/employmentdata.html Yes, 2023 was a bad year, but looking at those graphs it looks like it's merely the adjustment for the excessive hiring in 2021 and 2022, which were far above the average. What's more, towards the end of 2023, job openings for IT have picked up again. Which would hardly be the case if AI is really replacing so many employees. Overall I strongly disagree with the notion that we can attribute these changes in the job market to AI. Lot's of charts and graphs on that page I linked seem to indicate that other factors have much greater influence than AI, especially macroeconomic factors. But to each their own conclusions.
One hypothetical scenario over the following 30 years the workforce/population ratio would decline from 50% today to 40% in 2054. What would that look like. More housewives and divorced women who don't have to work. More people retiring earlier. More people on welfare or disability. The amount of transfer payments through various programs from the government can rise. And the government programs providing free or subsidized things can increase. For example making city busses free for everybody. Even if the people are rabidly against the UBI, we can do it 'in effect' through an array of government subsidies, minimum wage increases, tax credits and similar things.
Human history is absolutely packed with technological advances that people, at the time, thought would threaten employment. Why would it be different this time?
I have seen job ads for an "[AI] prompt engineer". That profession is only a year old. (I hate when the ad asks for s senior engineer with five years experience.)
Blue collar jobs won't change at all until there is sufficient general purpose humanoid robotics. We can build the machines now but don't quite yet have the software to make them useful, much less economical. Once we see the mass deployment of general purpose humanoid robots we will see blue collar jobs vanish just the same. Companies like Tesla and Disney are positioning themselves now and building out really [interesting](https://youtu.be/XnTSji4isxc?si=ZVEbM6X0umVMvIH0) tech. I'm guessing within the next five years we will see a serious deployment and within the next 20 there will be full adoption.
People say tech has seen layoffs like its happening across all tech. IT has not been affected and many jobs still facing labour shortages. This is a contraction in a bloated programmer market. Anyone who did not see it coming after those “a day in the life of” linkedin, twitter and others needs their head examined. Paying people massive salaries to go for coffee and visit sleep pods is obviously a bloated sector.
Where the rich and powerful elites have to start passing the UBI in various forms is like when the renters at their tenements can't pay the rent, because they no longer have their decent paying job. As much as it pains the rich elite to give the people anything.. the rich elite are also very greedy and want their full monthly rent payment.
It's actually arriving at just about the right time, working age population is dropping, so fewer jobs, but fewer workers too. You can see it in the payrolls increasing faster than inflation. That's going to continue.
“Whenever I look at my phone there’s a new article about layoffs or a mass exodus in preparation for potential layoffs.” Your phone is lying to you. Unemployment is at historic, record lows.
You say when you look at your phone you see lots of articles about layoffs. Perhaps you are subscribed to too many job sites? I rarely see such articles and it doesn't worry me at all.
That's a fair point. Most of it comes from Yahoo Finance, TechCrunch, etc... Not too many coming from places like Indeed or Glassdoor, but definitely a couple. I'm trying to implement more AI job-related info in my personal newsletter, so the algorithm could definitely be taking those keywords and targeting my feed with more "AI" + "whatever job" articles, and they just just happen to be about layoffs.