Raw LLM Responses

The idea that every industry will be automated is of course just fear mongering. There are only about 80% of jobs in the US that are prime for automation, including logistics, manufacturing, middle management, farming, and low level support and creative work. It's a lot... But it's not everything. Of the roughly 130 million Americans who work a full time job, this leaves 104 million of them without their current full time job. This needs to be tempered with a lot of things. As we saw during the pandemic, a lot of people, when they cannot work, create work for themselves. People find legal ways and opportunities to sell their own value when they are otherwise unable to have their value purchased normally. We see the same thing with retired people who have a max income cap that they are allowed to make, and find ways to contract themselves out $1 short of that limit. As jobs disappear, I think we will see similar income constraints on employment, and a shift from traditional full time employment jobs, to project based contract work that people can choose to take up to the limits where it dramatically affects any ubi income. This would rebalanced a large number of jobs into part time work with high hourly pay, but very limited hours. Another thing to temper this is that new jobs are going to be created. Prompt engineer isn't exactly the coolest title on earth, but it is one of many new positions opening up to find the "how" to automate jobs because it isn't as simple as buying a product and letting it run. I work in IT and we have spent the last 30 years automating jobs away, and the number of people working in IT jobs is larger than the number of jobs displaced. I do think that this next level of automation (of which AI is only one piece of) will displace far more jobs than it creates (specifically IT jobs), but it will soften the overall blow. Instead of dropping to 25k jobs shared by 130M people, it will be more like 50-60k jobs split among 130M people. Still rough to be sure, but hardly a space where there is no work. Anoyher thing to soften the blow is that it isn't going to happen overnight. AI and automation more broadly takes a lot of compute, and a lot of electricity, and takes a lot of time to implement. Frankly, we cannot support high levels of automation as things stand right now. Not enough power, not enough implimenters, not enough chips, and it's still more expensive to pay $40-50k/year for an automation system that replaces $30-40k/yr jobs. The costs are falling, and manufacturing is scaling out, so it is coming... But we are still taking about another 5 years before a significant impact is made in the job market. The other thing that is going under reported is that American jobs are not the prime jobs that AI aims to cut. We already saw a lot of AI jobs leave as work went over seas in the 90s. Factories are popping up all over the Midwest right now... They don't hire a lot of people because a lot of the work is automated, but it is stealing jobs that were previously outsourced and bringing them back to the US. This time hiring 20-30 people instead of a small town of 500-1000 people... But it is replacing 500-1000 Chinese jobs with 20-30 American jobs. This may not be as devistating to our economy nearly as much as it is to SE Asian jobs. Textile production in particular is seeing jobs be decimated around the world, replaced by a few people on the east coast of the US operating computers to program in new designs. I still think automation will mean a net loss of jobs in the US over time... But less here than elsewhere, and over a much longer time period than many expect. The other thing that goes overlooked is just how cheap automation is going to make things as it builds out. If prices of automation continue dropping as expected, then in 20 years we should see dramatic price reductions in staple products. Specifically consumables like food, chemicals and base input products, and long term durable goods like dishwashers and ovens. Base products will be dirt cheap, while custom order products will be extremely expensive. People with new found time on their hands will serve themselves and their local neighborhood for anything custom in the black or grey markets, while base goods become cheap, allowing people to live on much less. To prevent deflation we will need a generous ubi or other branded support structure to prevent deflation. When you buy a fridge today for $2000, and in 5 years you want to remodel and the next fridge is $500 for something better... That is going to do weird things to the economy. Lots of sunk costs and stranded assets in a debt based economy where we always buy ahead on debt because it's typically cheaper than waiting to buy it later. That's going to be a weird culture shock of unintended concequences we will have to work through. Anywho, I think that startrek yet again saw this coming and called it right. Stuff is going to get really weird in the near future as jobs start disappointing and people can't retrain fast enough for the jew ones. It will be a massive shift, a major culture shock, and do weird things to personal, business and government finances... Dark and turbulent times ahead.... But once we get through it and adapt, I think we will see some pretty great times too.