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Re:GitHub Copilot by Jeff_Brown on Tuesday June 29, 2021 @11:55PM (#27684691)
It's hard to use history to predict the implications of weird new technologies. But history is clear on at least two happy facts. Technology generates new jobs -- no technology has led to widespread unemployment. (True general AI could be different; niche "AI" like this probably won't be.) Technology raises standards of living generally, and making a specific sector of the economy more productive increases the wealth accrued to that sector (although it can change who is in it too).

There are exceptions -- fancy weapons don't widely raise standards of living -- but the trends are strong.

Re:GitHub Copilot by acomar on Wednesday June 30, 2021 @12:38AM (#27684917)
what does unemployment have to do with it? if you're 22 and paying off loans and suddenly find yourself unable to work as much but a barista, continued employment isn't exactly a perk. meanwhile, the benefits of the increased productivity brought by new technology do accrue somewhere - it's just not with workers. the trends on that are also quite clear. productivity growth has been high over the past 40 years but real wages have at best been stagnant. and on the wheel turns, finding souls to grind beneath it's weight, anew.
Re:GitHub Copilot by Jeff_Brown on Wednesday June 30, 2021 @08:48AM (#27687815)
On your second point I agree -- the distribution within a sector matters, and most of them at the moment are disturbingly top-heavy.

On the first though, we have little reason to think tech will systematically diminish the roles people can fill. In the broad, the opposite has tended to happen throughout history -- although the narrow exceptions, like factory workers losing their jobs to robots, are real, and deserve more of a response than almost every government in the world has provided. For political stability, let alone justice.