Furthermore cost doesn't necessarily fall to the floor just because cost of production does. Many products are being kept up artificially and even more is being subsidized.
No but that's the entire problem. Why computer "assisted" when computers are getting to the point where they can do it on their own completely?
Robotics already outperform humans physically, and AI is (in many areas) approaching humans. So the risk here is complete replacement, not supplementing.
In the near term your solutions are solid, but that's a band aid. Humans will soon simply no longer be able to compete at all except for niches.
>the human simply operates the expert system.
Operate what? At the current pace the only operating required will be flicking the ON button.
>when was the last time you calculated an amortization schedule by hand
5.5 years ago. :p
The steam drill didn't beat John Henry, the system of technology, resources, and people behind the steam drill did. Until a computer decides that it wants to win a chess tournament and teaches itself how to play, humans will always be at the helm.
The problem is that it could be just one human. One person could own all of the machines. They would advise him, protect him, and carry out all of his orders.
Just imagine the President having his entire White House automated. The NSA? Automated. The military? Automated. Police? You get the picture. Robots and computers replacing everybody. One person in charge. 100% loyalty. Small pockets of resistance trying to hack into and take over robots, data centres, etc. Vast computing resources under the ruler's command employing all manner of encryption, fuzz testing, logging, surveillance, etc. in an attempt to eliminate the resistance.
It's like the plot of the Terminator movies without the general AI in charge. Instead, it's a legion of special purpose AIs serving the one guy.
The AI doesn't need to be fully conscious to kick a human's arse in the workspace.
> Operate what? At the current pace the only operating required will be flicking the ON button.
Maybe GP refers to a human operating the expert system like a manager operates an expert. :) And managers make good money on that, so no problem here.
Not if the new wealth is eaten as resource or monopoly rent.
some people arent capable of making the shift to this 'knowledge system' operator based work you mention, for various reasons.
and employeers arent going to be willing to take the time\cost to teach them.
And of course in the face of a combo of increased consumption and automation the jobs created are part time entry level retail.
As the need for human labor decreases, costs fall to the floor. This is specifically true for knowledge work that is not constrained by resource inputs. Imagine how much HN would cost to run if it was a newspaper or magazine? This may seem like it's still bad news for humans, because where do the new jobs come from? Yet we regularly see an increase in consumption to compensate for the reduction in production costs. This increase in consumption generally overruns the job reductions due to efficiency. The number of newspaper writers may drop, but the total number of employed writers goes up.
We also see this trend in technology. Early computers took a highly trained team to keep a single computer operating. Now technician to computer ratios can be 1000:1 or more. Yet we seen an increase in total employment rather than a reduction.
> the response to previous waves was a shift to knowledge work.
Computer assisted knowledge work may be precisely the answer to the unskilled and unemployed. Ubiquitous computing made it so that your banker only needs 1/10th the knowledge in order to be effective (when was the last time you calculated an amortization schedule by hand?).
Make it so the "knowledge work" is done by the expert system and the human simply operates the expert system.