Things that have caught my eye this week, including America's imminent recession, tech's bad bets, Japan's latest experiment, Israel gone rogue, and why Trump could not have done the Gershkovich deal
WRT the broader impact of AI, where I think we'll see the first substantial impact on the job market will be in the low/mid-range SMEs (subject matter experts). Their skill set, resembling conceptually an AI-generated level of polish, is immediately vulnerable and will be under pressure fairly soon.
This would include those currently in customer support, technical writers, etc.
Jobs that require human nuanced responses--that metaphysical element exemplified by such intangibles as "bedside manner", and to a degree, high-end sales, will persist longer.
Just guesses, though.
Sometimes I wonder if the homeless situation that we see in large urban areas in many industrialized democratic or republican nations is not the first edge of this trend, preceding the advent of AI, but a symptom of the same pressures that AI will leverage. By this I mean that while the modern homeless situation is a complex ball of yarn, so far as causes, I postulate that a large section of it is simply people who have insufficient skills to meet any current market demand for employment; they are not drunks, they are not addicts, they simply possess general skills that in former times could have earned them a living, but are insufficient today. This is to say, bluntly, that they have no contributory value to society in an economic sense, nor will they in any foreseeable system.
There has always been an element of this is the modern American workforce, but I perceive that this is a very much larger problem at this time, and it's growing: unemployability of significant numbers of essentially average humans.
Belatedly, I suspect this may be too pessimistic regarding the ability of economies to generate jobs, which has been sustained over many technological cycles. But how many of those jobs provide sufficiently stable incomes to support household formation, public services, pensions etc, seems to me a more open question...
This is an excellent analysis of current geopolitical issues.
Belated thanks!
WRT the broader impact of AI, where I think we'll see the first substantial impact on the job market will be in the low/mid-range SMEs (subject matter experts). Their skill set, resembling conceptually an AI-generated level of polish, is immediately vulnerable and will be under pressure fairly soon.
This would include those currently in customer support, technical writers, etc.
Jobs that require human nuanced responses--that metaphysical element exemplified by such intangibles as "bedside manner", and to a degree, high-end sales, will persist longer.
Just guesses, though.
Sometimes I wonder if the homeless situation that we see in large urban areas in many industrialized democratic or republican nations is not the first edge of this trend, preceding the advent of AI, but a symptom of the same pressures that AI will leverage. By this I mean that while the modern homeless situation is a complex ball of yarn, so far as causes, I postulate that a large section of it is simply people who have insufficient skills to meet any current market demand for employment; they are not drunks, they are not addicts, they simply possess general skills that in former times could have earned them a living, but are insufficient today. This is to say, bluntly, that they have no contributory value to society in an economic sense, nor will they in any foreseeable system.
There has always been an element of this is the modern American workforce, but I perceive that this is a very much larger problem at this time, and it's growing: unemployability of significant numbers of essentially average humans.
Belatedly, I suspect this may be too pessimistic regarding the ability of economies to generate jobs, which has been sustained over many technological cycles. But how many of those jobs provide sufficiently stable incomes to support household formation, public services, pensions etc, seems to me a more open question...
Boy, this Bidenomics in a Nutshell = Paying More to Live Worse. https://shorturl.at/3GJMd