Your point is spot on but only disproves the likelihood of any coming calamity. Understood in the way you describe, automation making human labor input redundant has been pervasive and relentlessly constant for at least 100 years. This sort of technological progress is precisely what accounts for improved economic productivity.
Interestingly, productivity has plateaued these past few years at the same time we're supposedly entering a golden period for applied machine learning. There are a million ways to explain that away, of course, but it's a reality people should really consider carefully before reflexively dismissing as transient.
In any event, if productivity improvements were to kick into high gear tomorrow we could expect more of the same--increasing displacement but not an overall, calamitous reduction in jobs per se. The increase in the unemployed labor force will open up new opportunities for businesses built around human services, while the reduction in prices for consumer goods will allow people to spend more money on those new services.
Things can totally get worse, especially in terms of wage inequality. But the laws of supply & demand make it almost impossible for a complex labor economy to simply fall off a cliff in the ways that overly imaginative "futurists" and "thinkers" would have us believe. In terms of basic economics, nothing about machine learning is substantially different from historical disruptions.
If you were to teleport somebody from 100 years ago to today, and then to 20 years from now, the relative differences in automation and computer intelligence between today and 20 years in the future would likely be indistinguishable from his perspective when comparing either of those time periods to 100 years ago. And yet without a doubt the contemporary and future economies would be far stronger, wealthier, and even more "equal" compared to the time period he came from. All precisely _because_ of that automation, not despite it.
Interestingly, productivity has plateaued these past few years at the same time we're supposedly entering a golden period for applied machine learning. There are a million ways to explain that away, of course, but it's a reality people should really consider carefully before reflexively dismissing as transient.
In any event, if productivity improvements were to kick into high gear tomorrow we could expect more of the same--increasing displacement but not an overall, calamitous reduction in jobs per se. The increase in the unemployed labor force will open up new opportunities for businesses built around human services, while the reduction in prices for consumer goods will allow people to spend more money on those new services.
Things can totally get worse, especially in terms of wage inequality. But the laws of supply & demand make it almost impossible for a complex labor economy to simply fall off a cliff in the ways that overly imaginative "futurists" and "thinkers" would have us believe. In terms of basic economics, nothing about machine learning is substantially different from historical disruptions.
If you were to teleport somebody from 100 years ago to today, and then to 20 years from now, the relative differences in automation and computer intelligence between today and 20 years in the future would likely be indistinguishable from his perspective when comparing either of those time periods to 100 years ago. And yet without a doubt the contemporary and future economies would be far stronger, wealthier, and even more "equal" compared to the time period he came from. All precisely _because_ of that automation, not despite it.