AI will save the world?
It&#x27;s not unfounded &quot;moral panic&quot; that AI will take our jobs, it will.<p>It&#x27;s not hard to find accounts of people who say they&#x27;re 2x, 3x, 5x more efficient in their work now. That&#x27;s going to quickly translate into 1x person working at 5x efficiency putting 1-4 people out of work. It&#x27;s not hard to find accounts of people who have already lost their jobs-- such stories have popped up here on HN.<p>Sure, you can argue that the jobs are simply displaced, and others will emerge requiring different skills than AI can easily perform, but that doesn&#x27;t negate the reasonable <i>panic</i> individuals in jobs will feel. The article cites off-shoring as an example, but that&#x27;s actually my point: I know various people who were ~55-60 when offshoring hit they industry or company. They were displaced and never found a new career-- their expertise was in areas that other corps were also outsourcing. I saw plenty of individuals hop to another company only to have their job and the new corp ofshored a few years later. Then if they&#x27;re lucky &amp; near the finish line they can take early retirement, but if they&#x27;re a bit short of that mark they worked jobs that paid minimum wage+$1-$7&#x2F;hour. Apart from other people I came across, I knew several such individuals when I worked a big box retail book store (when those were still relevant) during my college years.<p>So yeah, even if the author is correct that job loss or displacements are temporary, that&#x27;s still a process that takes a minimum of 10-20 years. Retirement age minus 10-20 years is a whole heck of a lot of the population that are in jobs right now that can be automated of 3-5x&#x27;ed by a single person. Panic, or at least anxiety, is a rational response to that. Sure, a person should learn the new tools ASAP to be one of the 1x-now-5x workers but there&#x27;s just not enough slots for everyone.