Tech companies should stop pretending AI won’t destroy jobs
Mechanization &#x27;destroyed&#x27; millions of jobs, when people were replaced by mechanized equipment replaced farm workers, horse breeders&#x2F;tenders, folks in the transportation business, etc.<p>Electronic computers &#x27;destroyed&#x27; jobs when they replaced human computers.<p>Motorized street sweepers &#x27;destroyed&#x27; jobs when they replaced people with brooms sweeping debris off of streets (except in Beijing where, as of 2015, this is still a thing).<p>Firearms &#x27;destroyed&#x27; jobs when bowers no longer had any reason to mass produce bows and arrows.<p>People will find a way to stay busy. The past is literally filled with examples of a new technology replacing people, and those people eventually found other things to do. It&#x27;s not hard to see, in hindsight, how many of my silly (but real) examples above translated into entirely new industries.<p>Pardon the harshness here, I feel like the only people this is truly a surprise to is either folks that ignore the past, or are incapable of understanding the past.