>But if something approximating AGI does work out, human labor has absolutely no advantage over automation so it’s not clear why the past “automation has created more human jobs” logic should continue.

Human labor still seems to be cheaper. And then theres opex/capex to be considered. Like if they achieve AGI, and AGI isnt affordable its not going to displace much.

>“we have always found other jobs”

It really depends what humans value and what they have to spend. No one could predict that Banks would need more staff to deal with ATMs. It sucks being unable to predict past a coming automation revolution, but that doesnt mean there isnt something there.

>human labor has absolutely no advantage over automation

Humans are currently needed to manage automation. Theres no clear reason why, even with AGI, that we wouldn't want humans in most loops. Thats before cost and quality.

>The classic example of how drastically this kind of thinking can fail is Malthusian theory, that populations would collapse because food growth was linear while population growth was exponential. This was true for all of history until Malthus actually made this observation.

Malthus is a pretty great example. We did sort out food production. There are risks with the scale at which we have done it. Malthus wasnt able to predict technologies to aid food production, but he did forecast the need.

When I see people complaining the jobs dont exist I find its the same. We dont know what the jobs are, but that doesnt mean the prediction of all of humanity being out of work are correct.

Actually the worst part of this whole thing will be that any incoming job losses being catastrophised as if the whole world is ending due to AI.