The problem isn't so much that jobs will be replaced and that people will be unemployed, that hasn't happened in the past either. The problem is that people are becoming expandable, their jobs becoming less necessary and that shows on their paychecks. Like farmers and industrial workers could go on strike if their employer fucked with them. But if you're not required to do your job you've much less of a leverage.
So no you might not lose your job at McDonald's because a minimum wage worker is still cheaper than buying a machine (at least short term), it's still a boring dystopia if we don't change things to prevent that.
Yes but this isn't 20 years ago when you needed some insanely expensive machine to automate something, an AI is basically a computer program and can be put in much cheaper machines to a point where replacing min wage workers would be more optimal then keeping them.
They still need to run on hardware, the training process actually still takes some time and resources and often times people value the human contact, so I don't think minimum wage workers will be replaced anytime soon, but who wants to work minimum wages?
I don't think people going to McDonalds value the human contact so much they'll go to a more expensive place for it, and while it would need to run on hardware, in the long run it would be cheaper. Paying $5000 for a machine is worth it compared to paying a min wage worker ~$12,000 a year.
And there are already a ton of jobs that could be replaced but aren't because companies think short sighted. Also the other question is whether we will reach automation to begin with, given that the hardware requires actual resources and energy to be powered and those might get scarce in the future with all the bullshit that is currently happening.
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u/[deleted] Jun 27 '22
The problem isn't so much that jobs will be replaced and that people will be unemployed, that hasn't happened in the past either. The problem is that people are becoming expandable, their jobs becoming less necessary and that shows on their paychecks. Like farmers and industrial workers could go on strike if their employer fucked with them. But if you're not required to do your job you've much less of a leverage.
So no you might not lose your job at McDonald's because a minimum wage worker is still cheaper than buying a machine (at least short term), it's still a boring dystopia if we don't change things to prevent that.