One is to lament how previously specialized professions like taxi drivers become replaced by low-skilled laborers who just need to drive and use an app.
The other way is to appreciate how technology augments what humans can do and be more productive. It's not like all accountants got fired when Excel started being a thing: It's that they got way more work done!
There is no sign of a decrease in demand for labour in countries like the US or Germany: Quite the opposite, we have to get a lot more efficient in order to sustain an aging population!
>There is no sign of a decrease in demand for labour in countries like the US or Germany:
In fact there is growing evidence that increased automation actually increases demand for workers in the economy. It might reduce employment in the actual factory itself, but the remaining jobs there are more skilled and technical, the higher efficiency draws investment and allows companies to scale up, there's a significant trickle-down to the surrounding economy.
This makes sense when you look at the history of automation, but it's only recently that the processes that underly the way automation actually stimulates and enhances an economy have been better understood.
There is an argument that AI is different because it will substitute humans more completely, but we are a long, long way off from anything like that. The kinds of automation we have now, in terms of the effects on the economy and employment, are much more like automation over the last century or two than strong AI that renders humans fundamentally obsolete.
They also conclude that only 9% of all US jobs are actually at risk due to automation, using a much more reasonable approch that Frey and Osbourne [2017] who conlude 47% of the population with a risk > 70%:
Example relevant to what I do: the abundance of affordable software leading to people being able to make fully and professionally mixed and mastered albums in their bedroom didn't lead to all the studios closing. A mix engineer will always blow away anything I can do with the same tools as a generalist. What those tools did was enable people who previously couldn't afford to hire a studio to make music at a reasonable standard.
One is to lament how previously specialized professions like taxi drivers become replaced by low-skilled laborers who just need to drive and use an app.
The other way is to appreciate how technology augments what humans can do and be more productive. It's not like all accountants got fired when Excel started being a thing: It's that they got way more work done!
There is no sign of a decrease in demand for labour in countries like the US or Germany: Quite the opposite, we have to get a lot more efficient in order to sustain an aging population!