this post was submitted on 10 Mar 2024
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The manufacturing sector goes even further to proving my point. The same rhetoric of "We're only moving a small portion of manufacturing to China so we can invest more in our workforce here..." was a common line in the 80's, and 100% bullshit and lies as well. The intent was always to increase profits to the detriment of the human workforce they didn't give a single shit about.
Any person who buys into all the speeches about replacing human positions with X for the greater good of the existing workers is either naive, foolish, or in on the scam to begin with.
Employment rates aren't looking all that different, though. They're still a few percent from perfect.
Obviously it's bad for the specific workers replaced, but the general concept of innovation being good is backed by a lot of hard numbers.
They haven't even started all the plans they keep announcing. The point is, they are saying they aim to REPLACE humans with AI. Nobody should be so fucking naive to think they mean to hire humans back in support of this somehow. That's just idiotic.
The new jobs may come whether they "mean to" or not, though.
All that money that gets saved goes somewhere. Yes, "trickle-down" is a lie, simply feeding more money to already-rich people won't mean much to the economy. But if AI makes it cheaper to run a company it can also make it cheaper to start and grow a company. It's not just giant companies that will be making use of these tools.
You find some examples of this ever happening. You are a naive optimist or a fool if you think this has ever happened.
Here's an October 2023 survey on the subject from the Small Business and Entrepreneurship Council on the subject of AI adoption. It found very extensive usage for a wide range of needs.
I was speaking to automation inadvertently creating new jobs in the space they take away from, as you had suggested.