It is amazing how software engineers and AI researchers are automating themselves out of their jobs. Sure, it is all good if the revenue generated from automation is used for the good of all people, and if the AIs are aligned/ friendly. But looking at current indications, none of that is going to happen.
AI is just tech. It will enable things, including automation, just like previous generations of tech.
The dawn of the industrial revolution, in which we leveraged machines that were measured in 'horse power' (!) doing far more work than a man (or horse), didn't 'put us out of business' so to speak. Wages skyrocketed. Towards the start of the 20th century wages were high enough that rich folk couldn't afford to keep regular workers around as staff anymore.
I feel it would be naive to think it will just work itself out through capitalism though, it's worth thinking about what impact it will have and whether or not we need some new policies to help society truly capitalize in social value terms, on automation of everything we can automate. GDP is not a measure of how well your society is doing, and with automation we could skyrocket GDP and absolutely tank social measures of wellbeing.
In other words social reforms around how people earn income, or gain housing, food and necessities, might need to happen as we remove more and more jobs.
I'd like to think that as people are freed up they'll be able to do other jobs, but if we plan to automate everything we possibly can that has to eventually be false. Unless everyone's going to be a creative, and even the commercial side of that is starting to be automated. At my work people are already using AI generated images instead of stock photos, and AI generated jingles instead of stock music.
Automation has been happening since the industrial revolution (or the stone age, depending on how one sees it). If jobs were only removed, humanity would have been jobless long ago. People surely thought exactly the same thoughs a few centuries ago.
OP's statement is more precisely framed that jobs are on-net removed, not that jobs are only removed, which is a little harder to argue against.
But not much. What I think would be an economically sound case is an argument that Ricardian comparative advantage breaks down at the extremes. A robot that can do everything twice as good as you will still benefit from trade; a robot that can do everything a thousand times as good as you might just view you as atoms it could use better in a different configuration.
We're already seeing a blight of pointless jobs existing, does this just mean we all end up working pointless jobs instead of enjoying the fruits of our automation?
On the whole timescale, the same principle applies.
Even if we define the start automation as the industrial revolution, if automation would (mostly) remove "interesting" jobs and compensate with "pointless" jobs, by now, all the jobs would be "pointless"; but they very evidently aren't.
The problem is, as I wrote, that some people think we're a special period in history (most of the times, based on an ambiguos interpretation of the term "robot"), while there have been significant revolutions for a long time (possibly, forever). There's nothing different under the sun (on the whole timescale).
I share your skepticism, however, it would be more dangerous to try to make predictions.
Moreover, I think the worrying is a bit too much: AI isn't replacing any jobs really, mostly enabling.
For the most part, AI is 'improving things' - just as any other bit of software or R&D.
That the AI can do 'a bit better speech to text' aka 85% accuracy instead of the classical 72% is not going to change the world.
Almost all AI will make it's way into things incrementally, unnoticed. Things will just get a big smarter, safer, shinier.
There will be a small number of 'step functions' but likely not to put anyone out of work.
It's better to think of NN's as not even AI, it's a distraction. Imagine if we just called them 'adaptive algorithms' and didn't have the hype. What would we think about it? Without Elon Musk talking about Skynet killing us all?
There are maybe some bits of manual labour here and there that will mean maybe a narrow range of factory workers will be out of luck, but that will be temporary, and there will always be unskilled labour beyond the AI, if we need those kinds of jobs.
The way I see it the only jobs you are realistically automating (without full on AGI) are the CRUD and pipework jobs which are unambiguously explainable without a lot of context.
The difficulty/complexity in delivering software is mostly on having accurate domain knowledge on the problem you are trying to solve and how users or other machines in that environment interact with said software.
So again, unless we hit a landmark of a very outperforming AGI I think that much of the domain knowledge in many software 'niches' will be out of reach of automation.
That is not to say that many sub-tasks/boilerplate cannot be automated.
But you are missing the point that even a robot could code 90% of the boilerplate and leave it to someone with domain knowledge to check it through and possibly tweak a few bits.
Anything that can be automated will be automated. Software engineers are very expensive so the money is there to be made.
So are doctors, accountants etc.
I don't think its feasible but I'm sure people are working towards it. I'd start with healthcare actually because the West is aging rapidly.
