alt Hacker NewsThis is effectively Jevans paradox[1] in action.
The cost, in money or time, for getting certain types of work done decreases. People ramp up demand to fill the gap, "full utilization" of the workers.
Its a very old claim that the next technology will lead to a utopia where we don't have to work, or we work drastically less often. Time and again we prove that we don't actually want that.
My hypothesis (I'm sure its not novel or unique) is that very few people know what to do with idle hands. We tend to keep stress levels high as a distraction, and tend to freak out in various ways if we find ourselves with low stress and nothing that "needs" to be done.
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I think a lot of people would be fine being idle if they had a guaranteed standard of living. When I was unemployed for a while, I was pretty happy in general but stressed about money running out. Without the money issue the last thing I would want to do is to sell my time to a soulless corporation. I have enough interests to keep me busy. Work just sucks up time I would love to spend on better things.
Food production is a class case where once productivity is high enough you simply get fewer farmers.
We are currently a long way from that kind of change as current AI tools suck by comparison to literally 1,000x increases in productivity. So, in well under 100 years programming could become extremely niche.
>technology will lead to a utopia where we don't have to work
I'm kind of ok with doing more work in the same time, though if I'm becoming way more effective I'll probably start pushing harder on my existing discussions with management about 4 day work weeks (I'm looking to do 4x10s, but I might start looking to negotiate it to "instead of a pay increase, let's keep it the same but a 4x8 week").
If AI lets me get more done in the same time, I'm ok with that. Though, on the other hand, my work is budgeting $30/mo for the AI tools, so I'm kind of figuring that any time that personally-purchased AI tools are saving me, I deduct from my work week. ;-)
>very few people know what to do with idle hands
"Millions long for immortality that don't know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon." -- Susan Ertz
I don’t think it’s the consequence of most individuals’ preferences. I think it’s just the result of disproportionate political influence held by the wealthy, who are heavily incentivized to maximize working hours. Since employers mostly have that incentive, and since the political system doesn’t explicitly forbid it, there aren’t a ton of good options for workers seeking shorter hours.
Thank you! I didn't know this had a name. I remember thinking something along these lines in seventh grade social studies when we learned that Eli Whitney's cotton gin didn't actually end up improving conditions for enslaved people.
I suspected this would be the case with AI too. A lot of people said things like "there won't be enough work anymore" and I thought, "are you kidding? Do you use the same software I use? Do you play the same games I've played? There's never enough time to add all of the features and all of the richness and complexity and all of the unit tests and all of the documentation that we want to add! Most of us are happy if we can ship a half-baked anything!"
The only real question I had was whether the tech sector would go through a prolonged, destructive famine before realizing that.
Econ 101: supply is finite, demand infinite. Increased efficiency of production means that demand will meet the new price point, not that demand will cease to exist.
There are probably plenty of goods that are counter examples, but time utilization isn't one of them, I don't think.
> Time and again we prove that we don't actually want that.
That's the capitalist system. Unions successfully fought to decrease the working day to 8 hrs.
Yes in fact, to me it’s not a utopia that everyone’s going to paint landscapes, write poetry, or play musical instruments all day.
I worry more that an idle humanity will cause a lot more conflict. “An idle mind’s the devil’s playground” and all.
> Its a very old claim that the next technology will lead to a utopia where we don't have to work, or we work drastically less often. Time and again we prove that we don't actually want that.
It actually does but due to wrong distribution of reward gained from that tech(automation) it does not work for the common folks.
Lets take a simple example, you, me and 8 other HN users work in Bezos’ warehouse. We each work 8h/day. Suddenly a new tech comes in which can now do the same task we do and each unit of that machine can do 2-4 of our work alone. If Bezos buys 4 of the units and setting each unit to work at x2 capacity, then 8 of us now have 8h/day x 5 days x 4 weeks = 160h leisure.
Problem is, now 8 of us still need money to survive(food, rent, utilities, healthcare etc). So, according to tech utopians, 8 of us now can use 160h of free time to focus on more important and rewarding works.(See in context of all the AI peddlers, how using AI will free us to do more important and rewarding works!). But to survive my rewarding work is to do gig work or something of same effort or more hours.
So in theory, the owner controlling the automation gets more free time to attend interviews and political/social events. The people getting automated away fall downward and has to work harder to maintain their survivality. Of course, I hope our over enthusiastic brethren who are paying LLM provider for the priviledge of training their own replacements figure the equation soon and don’t get sold by the “free time to do more meaningful work” same way the Bezos warehouse gave some of us some leisure while the automation were coming online and needed some failsafe for a while. :)