The argument for keeping lamplighters reminds me of Milton Friedman's argument about make-work jobs:
At a canal-digging project, Friedman's hosts were eager to show the many laborers working to excavate a canal. But Friedman was more interested in the lack of modern machinery on the site. He asked why they relied on human labor to do a job that would be more easily and quickly done with modern machinery. “This is a jobs program,” came back the reply. Friedman responded that he had mistakenly thought they were building a canal. If they were only seeking to provide extended employment to many workers, he said, they would need even more if they handed out spoons for digging, rather than shovels.
Looking forward to hearing more about this! Maybe the solution isn't hard labor sinecures, but soft labor ones. Like social clubs, aids for the lonely, things like that? Maybe you're getting to that. . . Lamplighters who shine lights of hope and connection
Is it really true that humanity finds work ennobling as an indispensable part of human dignity? My understanding is that Roman aristocrats, for example, did not at all think in those terms, and their lessers modeled their lives after them. Hence, bread and circuses
You're right to poke at that assumption. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I'm not sure there's been much research on the impacts of people on UBI and not working versus working. I'd be interested in empirical studies of the impact on well being, behavior etc. That, I believe, would advance the conversation more than competing philosophical views about the dignity of work.
It’s unlikely that UBI will ever be much more than subsistence living, but in a future of unimaginable techno-abundance (ie benign robot overlords), maybe we will all live lives of ennui where we strive to entertain each other, with the assistance of an army of robot butlers and chefs that we all have access to.
...as a.i. aims to replace/improve art, music, writing, etc. i continually ask myself what and why we are building...a.i. to solve cancer bring it on...a.i. to help us get deeper into space let's go...a.i. to replace/improve creativity?...wait that is solving a problem that doesn't exist...and making a problem in its wake instead...as altman hemmed and hawwed about why we need a.g.i. all i continue to think about is how much of A.I. is a steve urkel technology...build build build an a-bomb and when it explodes wink at the laughing audience and say "did i do that?"...yes...yes you did...and we unfortunately have to contend with the destruction you might leave in your wake...
The range of use cases is really wild. Imagine a technology that can cure diseases and solve our greatest challenges but could also lead to the destruction you mention. All the more reason for humans to stay in control and figure out what's going on before it's too late...
We have to decide who/what work is for. Is it for the person doing it? Is it for efficiency and getting it done? If we don't retain some moral, human component of our work then our society will just get faker and faker.
The rise of AI will be occuring at the same time as the global depopulation demographic crisis, climate change, and gene editing / selecting embryos for specific traits. Pick your sci-fi dystopia?
Other known unknown variables are if human longevity really can be hacked, and if physics can become unstuck from the theorized string theory dead end -- potentially re-opening space exploration as a near future option.
There are really two solutions for obsolete skills in an era of automation (any kind of automation):
1) As suggested by some after the longshoremen's strike, simply proceed with automation while fully funding the retirements of the redundant longshoremen. At least in this narrow case, the economics works. The downside is that the economics may not work in other cases, of course.
2) Training in new technologies. "Learn to code", but with seriousness and compassion and taking into account the difficulties in adult education. This won't be free, either.
There are more solutions, but those are the go-to answers and a good starting point. In a future essay, I may map out various alternatives more expansively.
I highly recommend Noah Smith's piece on why comparative advantage means AI will most likely be reserved for its most efficient uses. Same reason why Warren Buffett has a secretary: It's more valuable for him to spend his time making money.
AI as productivity software will probably streamline a lot of "email jobs", and to a large extent that's a valuable cost savings, but if the next generation of AIs unlocks an insane improvement in protein folding that revolutionizes biotech, most of the compute will be spent on that.
I've been nursing a thesis lately that even with widespread use of AI as productivity software, humans will just march on up Maslow's pyramid and "fake it more than ever" rather than actually instituting UBI:
(1) WFH will become more ubiquitous and come to resemble something like a true "8 hours of real work / 32 hours of virtually pretending we're working = 40 hours to legally satisfy outdated labor-era regulations" as AIs optimize our schedules while we go to the grocery store.
(2) With AI tutors, more students qualify for college education, and college-level instruction becomes cheaper and more unmoored from expensive campus experiences than ever. Instead of a permanent UBI-dependent underclass, we get a larger PMC than ever, nursing those email jobs on "8/32=40" schedules. It's a leisure society the way Keynes always imagined it, except for those 32 hours we're still doing light knowledge work and organizing around those 8 hours.
(3) Because of all this, no one ends up *needing* a UBI. Job retraining becomes cheap and easy with AI tutors specialized for adult workers changing careers. Job allocation becomes easier with AIs tasked to sift through thousands of job listings for us.
The "UBI" really just ends up being people paid to sit and think up our next level of needs all day long.
Hi David - Are you saying UBI won't be needed because (a) many people will be be freelancer/solopreneur types working from home and (b) AI will accelerate education and retraining for other jobs that are still in the realm of humans? I am not clear on your main point. Please clarify.
More (b). I’m sure we’ll see plenty of (a). But yeah, (b). We’ll all be paying LinkedIn or its successor $200 for personalized headhunter bots. LI will offer premium concierge services to have a human run those bots for you to optimize their searches.
I agree with b and this view is affirmed by the McKinsey Report I reference in the essay. Many people just assume they'll lose jobs to automation and never work again, but the majority will reskill. Port workers may become nurses :)
Unfortunately, most jobs that require a human touch, and thus relatively immune from AI, are "feminized." Richard Reeves calls these HEAL. Men who want jobs will have to adapt to that reality and re-colonize those professions.
I disagree with that theory — I don’t think it bears out in the long run as a dominant dynamic. Doctors are a prime counterexample: it’s a care-based job that men dominate, because they’ve found ways to relegate the care side to women (nursing).
Likewise, brewing was at various points in most cultures considered “women’s work” until men turned to commercialize it.
So, while I think that “male flight from feminization” is a one-directional arrow (men almost always flee feminization), male invasions of feminine spaces clearly follow incentives towards commercialization.
I think the worm that actually ends up turning towards a boom in male jobs is construction. YIMBY will peak right as AI is coming in stride, and it’ll re-legalize an entire industry of traditionally male jobs.
Is it really true that humanity finds work ennobling as an indispensable part of human dignity? My understanding is that Roman aristocrats, for example, did not at all think in those terms, and their lessers modeled their lives after them. Hence, bread and circuses
The argument for keeping lamplighters reminds me of Milton Friedman's argument about make-work jobs:
At a canal-digging project, Friedman's hosts were eager to show the many laborers working to excavate a canal. But Friedman was more interested in the lack of modern machinery on the site. He asked why they relied on human labor to do a job that would be more easily and quickly done with modern machinery. “This is a jobs program,” came back the reply. Friedman responded that he had mistakenly thought they were building a canal. If they were only seeking to provide extended employment to many workers, he said, they would need even more if they handed out spoons for digging, rather than shovels.
lol, classic
Looking forward to hearing more about this! Maybe the solution isn't hard labor sinecures, but soft labor ones. Like social clubs, aids for the lonely, things like that? Maybe you're getting to that. . . Lamplighters who shine lights of hope and connection
Yes, I think you're onto something. The value of human connection and community will rise. So will jobs that require it.
Is it really true that humanity finds work ennobling as an indispensable part of human dignity? My understanding is that Roman aristocrats, for example, did not at all think in those terms, and their lessers modeled their lives after them. Hence, bread and circuses
Why would a future of UBI and Netflix be so bad?
You're right to poke at that assumption. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I'm not sure there's been much research on the impacts of people on UBI and not working versus working. I'd be interested in empirical studies of the impact on well being, behavior etc. That, I believe, would advance the conversation more than competing philosophical views about the dignity of work.
It’s unlikely that UBI will ever be much more than subsistence living, but in a future of unimaginable techno-abundance (ie benign robot overlords), maybe we will all live lives of ennui where we strive to entertain each other, with the assistance of an army of robot butlers and chefs that we all have access to.
😹😹
...as a.i. aims to replace/improve art, music, writing, etc. i continually ask myself what and why we are building...a.i. to solve cancer bring it on...a.i. to help us get deeper into space let's go...a.i. to replace/improve creativity?...wait that is solving a problem that doesn't exist...and making a problem in its wake instead...as altman hemmed and hawwed about why we need a.g.i. all i continue to think about is how much of A.I. is a steve urkel technology...build build build an a-bomb and when it explodes wink at the laughing audience and say "did i do that?"...yes...yes you did...and we unfortunately have to contend with the destruction you might leave in your wake...
The range of use cases is really wild. Imagine a technology that can cure diseases and solve our greatest challenges but could also lead to the destruction you mention. All the more reason for humans to stay in control and figure out what's going on before it's too late...
We have to decide who/what work is for. Is it for the person doing it? Is it for efficiency and getting it done? If we don't retain some moral, human component of our work then our society will just get faker and faker.
The rise of AI will be occuring at the same time as the global depopulation demographic crisis, climate change, and gene editing / selecting embryos for specific traits. Pick your sci-fi dystopia?
Other known unknown variables are if human longevity really can be hacked, and if physics can become unstuck from the theorized string theory dead end -- potentially re-opening space exploration as a near future option.
Yes, well said. The future is going to be wild.
And most of these will combine somehow!
There are really two solutions for obsolete skills in an era of automation (any kind of automation):
1) As suggested by some after the longshoremen's strike, simply proceed with automation while fully funding the retirements of the redundant longshoremen. At least in this narrow case, the economics works. The downside is that the economics may not work in other cases, of course.
2) Training in new technologies. "Learn to code", but with seriousness and compassion and taking into account the difficulties in adult education. This won't be free, either.
There are more solutions, but those are the go-to answers and a good starting point. In a future essay, I may map out various alternatives more expansively.
"To Yarvin, it is better to be a lamplighter than an idle welfare recipient collecting UBI checks and binge-watching Netflix."
I agree, but if we respond to a fall in real wages in many occupations with more generous EITC rather than UBI we avoid this dilemma.
Excellent point
I highly recommend Noah Smith's piece on why comparative advantage means AI will most likely be reserved for its most efficient uses. Same reason why Warren Buffett has a secretary: It's more valuable for him to spend his time making money.
https://www.noahpinion.blog/p/plentiful-high-paying-jobs-in-the
AI as productivity software will probably streamline a lot of "email jobs", and to a large extent that's a valuable cost savings, but if the next generation of AIs unlocks an insane improvement in protein folding that revolutionizes biotech, most of the compute will be spent on that.
I've been nursing a thesis lately that even with widespread use of AI as productivity software, humans will just march on up Maslow's pyramid and "fake it more than ever" rather than actually instituting UBI:
(1) WFH will become more ubiquitous and come to resemble something like a true "8 hours of real work / 32 hours of virtually pretending we're working = 40 hours to legally satisfy outdated labor-era regulations" as AIs optimize our schedules while we go to the grocery store.
(2) With AI tutors, more students qualify for college education, and college-level instruction becomes cheaper and more unmoored from expensive campus experiences than ever. Instead of a permanent UBI-dependent underclass, we get a larger PMC than ever, nursing those email jobs on "8/32=40" schedules. It's a leisure society the way Keynes always imagined it, except for those 32 hours we're still doing light knowledge work and organizing around those 8 hours.
(3) Because of all this, no one ends up *needing* a UBI. Job retraining becomes cheap and easy with AI tutors specialized for adult workers changing careers. Job allocation becomes easier with AIs tasked to sift through thousands of job listings for us.
The "UBI" really just ends up being people paid to sit and think up our next level of needs all day long.
Hi David - Are you saying UBI won't be needed because (a) many people will be be freelancer/solopreneur types working from home and (b) AI will accelerate education and retraining for other jobs that are still in the realm of humans? I am not clear on your main point. Please clarify.
More (b). I’m sure we’ll see plenty of (a). But yeah, (b). We’ll all be paying LinkedIn or its successor $200 for personalized headhunter bots. LI will offer premium concierge services to have a human run those bots for you to optimize their searches.
I agree with b and this view is affirmed by the McKinsey Report I reference in the essay. Many people just assume they'll lose jobs to automation and never work again, but the majority will reskill. Port workers may become nurses :)
I dunno bout that last bit. Men do tend to reliably avoid feminized occupations.
I’d more expect men to spend their time designing nursing bots.
Unfortunately, most jobs that require a human touch, and thus relatively immune from AI, are "feminized." Richard Reeves calls these HEAL. Men who want jobs will have to adapt to that reality and re-colonize those professions.
I disagree with that theory — I don’t think it bears out in the long run as a dominant dynamic. Doctors are a prime counterexample: it’s a care-based job that men dominate, because they’ve found ways to relegate the care side to women (nursing).
Likewise, brewing was at various points in most cultures considered “women’s work” until men turned to commercialize it.
So, while I think that “male flight from feminization” is a one-directional arrow (men almost always flee feminization), male invasions of feminine spaces clearly follow incentives towards commercialization.
I think the worm that actually ends up turning towards a boom in male jobs is construction. YIMBY will peak right as AI is coming in stride, and it’ll re-legalize an entire industry of traditionally male jobs.
Is it really true that humanity finds work ennobling as an indispensable part of human dignity? My understanding is that Roman aristocrats, for example, did not at all think in those terms, and their lessers modeled their lives after them. Hence, bread and circuses
Why would a future of UBI and Netflix be so bad?