Skip to content
Fernando Borretti·

🤖99% of 1790 jobs automated, humans wealthier but facing new challenges

Automation leads to wealth but raises existential questions

TL;DR

Automation has wiped out 99% of jobs from 1790, making humans wealthier and healthier. However, this raises questions about the future role of humans in an AI-driven economy and the potential for societal changes.

Automation has wiped out 99% of jobs from 1790, making humans wealthier and healthier. However, this raises questions about the future role of humans in an AI-driven economy and the potential for societal changes. If AI develops to the point where humans and AIs have enduring complementarity, humans might still have jobs in the post-AGI future. But if AI becomes truly general and vastly smarter, faster, and cheaper than humans, there might be nothing for humans to do except live off UBI. The state can be arbitrarily repressive if AIs fight wars, and humans become economically useless. AI writing has become common in major newspapers and GitHub projects, making the discourse around software engineering dumber. The instrumental dimension of software engineering has improved, but the dimension of work that's about building up human capital has collapsed.

99% of 1790 jobs automated, humans wealthier but facing new challenges — Fernando Borretti

Key Points

1

99% of jobs from 1790 have been automated, making humans wealthier and healthier.

2

AI writing has become common in major newspapers and GitHub projects, making discourse dumber.

3

The instrumental dimension of software engineering has improved, but the dimension of work that builds human capital has collapsed.

4

If AI becomes truly general and smarter than humans, humans might live off UBI with no jobs.

5

AIs can fight wars, making the state arbitrarily repressive if humans are economically useless.

Why It Matters

If you're working in software engineering, the discourse around your work has gotten dumber as AI writing becomes common. The instrumental dimension of software engineering has improved, but the dimension of work that's about building up human capital has collapsed. This means that while the technical aspects of your job may improve, the human aspects of building knowledge and skills may suffer.

automationAIsocietal-impactsoftware-engineeringfuture-of-work

Frequently Asked Questions

Why does this matter?

If you're working in software engineering, the discourse around your work has gotten dumber as AI writing becomes common. The instrumental dimension of software engineering has improved, but the dimension of work that's about building up human capital has collapsed. This means that while the technical aspects of your job may improve, the human aspects of building knowledge and skills may suffer.

What happened?

Automation has wiped out 99% of jobs from 1790, making humans wealthier and healthier. However, this raises questions about the future role of humans in an AI-driven economy and the potential for societal changes.

Comments

Subscribe to join the conversation...

Be the first to comment

Enjoyed this article?

Get it daily. 7am. Free. Reads in 5 minutes.

Join 3,470 builders reading daily.

Also get