Will AI take our jobs?

Capitalism won't allow for the end of work because of AI

Question: Will AI take our jobs?
Position1 of 3›: No: there will always be jobs for humans
Argument‹3 of 3: Capitalism won't allow for the end of work because of AI

Capitalism will not allow for the end of work as AI becomes more common in the workplace. For example, new jobs will emerge to manage and control AI. Jobs will not disappear, they will evolve to reflect developing technology.

The argument

The argument treats capitalism as an adaptive system rather than as a fixed arrangement of jobs. Capitalism is such a successful economic model precisely because it has inbuilt coping mechanisms for difficult transformations — and on this account automation by AI is a difficult transformation of a kind the system has already absorbed more than once. The mechanism runs through ownership. When complex automated technology displaces workers, the savings do not vanish: they accrue as new wealth to whoever owns the automation. That wealth then seeks a return, which is how the market absorbs the shocks of job losses. The owners of the technology create new industries, and those industries in turn create jobs that did not exist before the displacement. The same profitability that makes automation attractive in the first place is what funds the activity that re-employs the people it displaces. The historical record is offered as evidence that this is how the process actually runs. All previous economic shifts followed the pattern — the globalisation of markets, the shift away from agriculture to industry, and the creation of financial markets each led to job losses in some areas and job creation in new ones. In none of them did the disappearance of particular occupations produce an end to work as such. What changed was where the work was, not whether there was any. AI, on this reading, is another instance rather than an exception to it. It eliminates specific tasks and the roles built around them, and the wealth generated by eliminating them funds whatever is built next. An actual end of work would require the system to stop converting profit into new enterprise, and that conversion is the mechanism that has made capitalism successful. There will therefore always be jobs for humans.

Context

The market, politicians, and heads of industry will all adapt to the automated world by creating new jobs, even if they aren’t truly essential jobs

Premises

[P1]Capitalism has inbuilt mechanisms that absorb shocks from major economic transformations by generating new wealth and new industries. [P2] Every previous major economic shift, such as globalization and the move from agriculture to industry, has destroyed some jobs while creating new ones elsewhere. [P3] The rise of AI is another such economic shift, so its owners will reinvest gains into new industries that generate new jobs. [C] Therefore, capitalism will not allow AI to end work, and there will always be jobs for humans.

Counter-arguments

Capitalism has never faced a problem so great as mass automation. The way in which capitalism creates new jobs is to allow for mass poverty and inequality. If this happens on the scale that automation promises it will, then human society as we know it could be irreparably damaged.

Rejecting the premises

The market claims to distribute equally, but soaring inequality levels dictate that it has failed in this regard. The market is simply not as logical and fail-proof as people make it out to be.