The only reason it's not the case in this example is because computers at the time were a tiny early adopter niche, which massively multiplied and expanded to other areas. Like, only 1 in 10,000 businesses would have one in 1950, and only big firms would. Heck, then 1 in 100 million people even had a computer.
Today they've already done that expansion into all businesses and all areas of corporate, commerce, and leisure activities. Now almost everybody has one (or a comparable device in their pocket).
Already cloud based systems have made it so that a fraction of programmers and admins are needed. In some cases eliminating the need for one altogether.
Notice that during that time there weren't all of a sudden less programmers, or managers or sysadmins, if anything there's more. If anything everyone is even more stressed with more to do because of the context switching and 24/7. That's why this will do, I'd bet money on it.
Yeah. Also, unfortunately, it turns out those people in the 80s and 90s got it right. They didn't really need a computer - they'd better off without one. But as soon as we got them, we'd find some things to use them for - mostly detrimental to our lives!
...And also over 100 bugs in the spec that governs communication between car systems: https://youtu.be/hXnS_Xjwk2Y?t=899 (around 15 minute mark)
And instead of the 97% unemployment our intuition tell us would happen, we're instead 30x as productive.
The same will happen when/if AI makes writing software far more effective.
Economic productivity simply means output per worker. So, we could make 97% of the US population permanently unemployed tomorrow, and as long as the AI replacement labor yielded equal or greater proceeds to the remaining 3%, we’d see a colossal increase in “productivity.”
That would be in the interest of the 3% to do (or attempt), which is what makes the scenario so scary.
Sure, there will be niche sub-industries that will be erased by LLMs, and people who have those niche skills will suffer. This has always been the case with technological advances. And always, it has not disrupted the economy.
What are S-curves.
The fear that technological advances will cause mass unemployment and destroy labour markets has been common throughout history. Yet here we are at full employment. Maybe this time is different?
I'm still a bit bummed about it, because just writing and structuring code is something that often brings me joy (and maybe your wife feels similarly about the actual translation work...), but at the end of the day, I realized well before all this AI craze that it really isn't the most valuable thing I do in my job.
Yeah. The problem is that there’s only one of me. All the rest of you are filling in for the other guy.
Increased productivity doesn't necessarily lead to overall job loss, but it will eventually in the area where the productivity is realized. Agricultural employment is a very clear example.
A lot of projects today are not even greenlit because they would be too expensive to make. For instance, there are a lot processes in almost every country that require you to file paper forms, even though we have had web forms and databases for 25 years. This goes even for rich countries. If one programmer is able to do the job of 5 others, we will probably have 5 times as many systems to tend to now that businesses and institutions can afford them.