I think there’s a connection between (A) a common misconception in thinking about future AI (that it’s not a huge deal if it’s “only” about as good as humans at most things), and (B) a common misconception in economics (the “Lump Of Labor Fallacy”).
So I started writing a blog post elaborating on that, but got stuck because my imaginary reader is not an economist and kept raising objections that amounted to saying “yeah but the Lump Of Labor Fallacy isn’t actually a fallacy, there really is a lump of labor” 🤦
Anyway, it’s bad pedagogy to explain a possibly-unintuitive thing by relating it to a different possibly-unintuitive thing. Oh well. (I might still try again to finish writing it at some point.)
It matters a lot what specifically it means to be "as good at humans at most things". The vast majority of jobs include both legible, formal tasks and "be a good employee" requirements, much more nebulous and difficult to measure. Being just as good as the median employee at the formal job description, without the flexibility and trust from being a functioning member of society is NOT enough to replace most workers. It'll replace some, of course.
That said, the fact that "lump of labor" IS a fallacy, and there's not a fixed amount of work to be done, which more workers simply spread more thinly, means that it's OK if it displaces many workers - there will be other things they can valuably do.
By that argument, human-level AI is effectively just immigration.
Being just as good as the median employee at the formal job description, without the flexibility and trust from being a functioning member of society is NOT enough to replace most workers. It'll replace some, of course.
Yup, the context was talking about future AI which can e.g. have the idea that it will found a company, and then do every step to make that happen, and it can do that about as well as the best human (but not dramatically better than the best human).
I definitely sometimes talk to people who say “yes, I agree that that scenario will happ... (read more)