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Who is leading the conversation/research around tech related job disruption?

12 points by chrisAU-ca ↗ HN
I’m having troubles finding places where people are talking about job loss due to automation and the impact of disruptive tech from the perspective of the general, non-tech, population. I’m kind of looking for someone or some publication who’s summarizing all the issues and perspectives. Thanks for your help!

11 comments

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PaulHoule
I think that is because it is a non-issue or has been a non-issue for a very long time despite the hype. Since the 1960s there has been a literature on the idea that automation would lead to widespread unemployment and it didn’t happen. The kind of people who are really qualified to talk on the subject are the people who seem most in demand.

If you do look at case studies of major transformation or work getting worse you don’t see IT being central to it. For instance, you don’t see longshoreman slinging bags of sugar with hooks but instead you see a longshore(wo)man lifting a whole shipping container with a big crane. In cases like medicine, teaching, etc. that some would say are becoming awful jobs one could say they are awful jobs because there is not enough innovation, it is not possible to invest in capital to make workers more productive but rather the one knob you have to turn is tightening the screws on workers to lower costs by nickel and dimming them.

Not to say the future is like the past. Since Adam Smith it has usually been the case that trade ‘floats most boats’ but after 2000 the rapid industrialization of China happened quickly enough that manufacturing workers in the US wound up much worse. You might make the case that this will finally happen w/ automation after 60 years of handwringing.

WillAdams
There has been unemployment for specific fields, and also instances of unions negotiating for sinecures --- typesetters at newspapers being a notable example of both.

Back in the 70s there was discussion of specifically taxing computer components so as to provide funds for handling the reduction in work hours/positions which such would facilitate --- perhaps we need to do something along these lines for AI?

At some point, automation and efficiency should reduce the number of hours of labor which the world as a whole needs to be done --- what is to be done for the folks who are rendered unemployable? At a job call at my previous employer (a large, privately-owned printer) we hired 100 entry-level folks --- six months later, only 1 of them was still employed at the company, the balance either having moved on to other jobs, or having been terminated for performance and attendance issues, mostly the latter. Pay and benefits are quite competitive.

chrisAU-ca
Ah, this is one of the foundational arguments I’m interested in. It focuses on the macro economic view of innovation. Now, who is concerned with realizing that distribution of wealth, how do you quantify it?
WillAdams
Good question. I wish that governments all across the world were looking past the next election to think about such topics over the long haul.
chrisAU-ca
My pessimism has gone far beyond trusting the government. Also, ethically, do the disrupters not have a responsibility to understand, quantify and inform the disrupted, if not help them directly? This is a subjective question I think, each person will have their own preference here.
chrisAU-ca
The historical trend is that innovation brings net positive impact over the long run, especially in areas like safe work, medicine, etc. I want to know about what goes on in between the disruption and once society normalizes and realizes the net benefit. And now does the rate of disruption impact this. Following a Moores law curve means that 5 years of innovation starting today doesn’t equate to 5 years of innovation in the 1920s. A question I should research and answer myself is in the history of massive changes in markets and workforces, what forces were at play, which, if any, were impacted by technological innovation. And also, what is the rate of innovation related workforce disruption in the past 5 years. Does it follow Moores law or some other curve?
benvolio
David Autor of MIT is not a bad place to start.
contingencies
Is there even a conversation? Perhaps only at the academic level by old-school Marxist types, or in politicking to effect event weaponization.

The documentary American Factory (2019) is a relatively recent human interest case study. Viewed in this light, automation generally acts as a fell-swoop solution to older approaches in businesses capable of making the required capital investment.

In terms of a process engineering business case, you can rarely just fully automate one unit operation, because the benefits will be quashed by adjacent, older process. It makes far more business sense to go the whole way and automate everything.

vimanuelt
Software engineering and releases are turned into social events to improve the odds of staying employed. Everyone plays their part in the status quo. Those individuals that do not play along are encouraged to go elsewhere.