From adamsmith.org
The key line: “The aim of economic advance is - always - to
kill jobs.”
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How
disappointing, AI isn’t going to make us all that much richer
We are told that:
Artificial intelligence could displace between 1m and 3m
private sector jobs in the UK, though the ultimate rise in unemployment will be
in the low hundreds of thousands as growth in the technology also creates new
roles, according to Tony Blair’s thinktank.
Between 60,000 and 275,000 jobs will be displaced every year
over a couple of decades at the peak of the disruption, estimates from the Tony
Blair Institute (TBI) suggest.
It described the figure as “relatively modest” given the
average number of job losses in the UK has run at about 450,000 a year over the
past decade. More than 33 million people are employed in the UK.
The aim of economic advance is - always - to kill jobs. Or,
to enable us to gain the output without the use of human labour. That’s the
same statement. For that means that we can now have that output from the
machines, without labour, plus the new output that we devise that newly freed
up human labour to. It’s that new output which is how much richer the machines
have just made us.
So, when people say that a revolutionary technology will
only kill off a couple of hundred thousand jobs that is to insist that the
technology’s not, in fact, all that revolutionary.
As we - to excess perhaps - like to point out the tractor is
what gave us the NHS. Before the tractor, the basic mechanisation of
agriculture, 90% of the population had to work in the fields to feed the 100%.
That 10% not up to its knees in mud is what gave us the Navy, cathedrals, the
law, books and all the rest. Now we have tractors and only 2% work on the land.
That means 98% of the population can work on not-food things - ballet, the NHS,
a change of clothes for all and yes, I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. The
wealth created by tractors is exactly that we’ve the human labour available to
now staff the NHS.
“Only a few jobs destroyed” is exactly what proves that the
new tech is a bit of a damp squib.
But then this is an estimate from the Tony Blair Institute
after all. They’re not even aware that new tech doesn’t, in fact, mean
unemployment in the first place. It just means that the newly displaced human
labour goes off and does something else - like the NHS.
Tim Worstall
