Will AI buy stuff?
The sudden AI craze is interesting to me as the premise is we will have a transformational boom in productivity in the future. That's actually probably a fair statement. We've already seen how robotics has transformed manufacturing and machinery has transformed road construction, just to name a few examples. 🚜
Creative destruction has been shown to increase efficiency and productivity right? But AI could be truly something we have never seen before.
The somewhat less talked about result of AI boosting productivity is all of the human jobs that will be lost. The argument has long been of course that such job destruction creates the opportunity for those workers to learn new skills and have "better", higher paying jobs.
Indeed, this seems to be what has mostly played out over the decades? Further, new jobs that we haven't even dreamed about and that never existed before. I think all of that is a fair conclusion given historical precedent.
There's two things that come to mind -
1. We seem to be quickly approaching a threshold to where humans don't offer any benefit whatsoever. It started with physical limitation. Machines can be easily built to lift more, go faster, etc. than any human can. Now, AI is pushing to the point of surpassing a human's mental capacities. Data processing 🖥️started it long ago and now AI is in decision making, creating art 🖼️, and all sorts of other things previously thought never possible by anything other than a human.
2. If 1 is reasonable, what new jobs will be available to humans? If an AI powered machine is more capable physically and mentally than any human, what value at all do we have economically? 🤷♂️
AI innovation could quite literally change our society in a permanent way. And yes productivity will be higher, but if you have mass human unemployment because those people have been replaced....how can you afford to go out to dinner? Or vacation at the beach? Or buy your kid a Christmas present? After all, 70% of the economy is based on "consumer" spending.
Corporation will be more profitable and productive because of lower costs, but who will they sell to? AI bots will have most of the jobs. 🤖
Is this going to push us further down the road of Universal Basic Income for humans? How can you compete with an AI bot who can do everything better than you? There is never a worker shortage, because you just build more. Then what happens what AI gains consciousness? 😵💫🫢🫣
I don't know the answers, but it seems to be the step up from the Internet to AI is a very different situation and could have a number of unexpected outcomes.
