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to find this post at the new site one of the recurring themes on this blog has been the consequences of robots ai or rapid technological change on labor demand will humans be put out of work by robots and will this mean paradise or destitution i ve generally argued that we should be optimistic about robots and ai and the like but others have made coherent arguments for pessimism i spent a chunk of this week reading over posts both new and old and thinking more about these positions if there is one distinct difference between the robo pessimist and robo optimist view it is almost exclusively down to timing the pessimists are worried that the rapid decline of human labor is occurring now and in many cases has been occurring for a while already the optimists believe that we have time in front of us to sort things out before human labor is replaced en masse brynjolfsson and mcafee s latest is a good example of this robo optimist view they concede that human labor is in danger of being replaced but will there be enough demand especially over the long term for those two types of human labor that which must be done by people and that which can t yet be done by machines there is a real possibility that the answer is no that human labor will in aggregate decline in relevance because of technological progress just as horse labor did earlier if that happens it will raise the specter that the world may not be able to maintain the industrial era s remarkable trajectory of steadily rising employment prospects and wages for a growing population but at the same time they do not think this is imminent but are our interpersonal abilities the only ones that will allow us to stave off economic irrelevance over at least the next decade the answer is almost certainly no that s because recent technological progress while moving surprisingly fast is still not on track to allow robots and artificial intelligence to do everything better than humans can within the next few years so another reason that humans won t soon go the way of the horse is that humans can do many valuable things that will remain beyond the reach of technology on the robo pessimism side richard serlin has a mega post about the declining prospects for human labor and the possible consequences what is interesting about richard s post is that he essentially makes the case that the replacement of human labor by automation has been occurring for decades we are already living with it he cites a 2011 miliken institute report surely the most astonishing statistic to be gleaned from the trend data is the deterioration in the market outcomes for men with less than a high school education the median earnings of all men in this category have declined by 66 percent not a misprint from 1969 to 2009 at the same time this group has experienced a 23 percentage point decline in the probability of having any labor market earnings roughly 10 percentage points of the 23 percentage points is attributable to the fact that more men are reporting disabilities even though work in physically demanding jobs has been declining for many decades men with just a high school diploma did only marginally better their wages declined by 47 percent and their participation in the labor force fell by 18 percentage points richard s point is that demand for unskilled male labor has shrunk demonstrably over the last few decades and that this is only going to continue as robots or ai or automation come online even if you include the increase in female labor force participation we ve seen in the last 20 years that labor force participation has flatlined and started to decrease there isn t a lot of daylight between the robo pessimists and robo optimists both are wary of the replacement of human labor the big difference is whether you think this is a present or a future problem it is becoming hard to see what is optimistic about the robo optimist viewpoint i think it is helpful to get beyond the binary viewpoints let s divide things up as follows strong robo pessimism robots and ai will come no matter what we do they will reduce demand for labor so much that the majority of humans will have no work to do and we will be at the whim of the minority of robot ai owners the horse argument is a form of strong robo pessimism weak robo pessimism i d classify richard serlin here weak robo pessimism thinks that labor is already being replaced but there are things we can do to ameliorate this education redistribution weak robo optimism brynjolfsson and mcafee are a good example of this viewpoint possibility that labor will be replaced but this hasn t occurred yet we have time to adapt to the distributional issues strong robo optimism robots and ai will come no matter what we do they will create a scenario of material wealth such that humans will no longer need to work but if they want to they will always be able to invent something new to do one of the issues in discussing these topics is that we often are not arguing with the right group weak robo optimists use strong robo pessimists as their straw man weak robo pessimists use strong robo optimists as their straw man i am as guilty of this as anyone i think the argument that humans are doomed because look what happened to horses is stupid people are not horses they are apes and apes are intelligent creative and social the last one is very important because it means we have a built in demand for being around other people a demand that we routinely pay to have supplied we will always find ways to pay other people to interact with us the horse agument though is a form of strong robo pessimism when i go after it it makes it seem as if i have a real distinct difference from someone like richard a weak robo pessimist i don t i think i am a weak robo optimist and if you really get down to it the implications of the weak forms are not really different read through richard s post or the brynjolfsson and mcafee post or this article in the guardian or this one in the ft you get the same advice from weak robo pessimists and weak robo optimists training we need to equip people with skills that allow them to move into jobs that are harder to replace or at least to keep leapfrogging into jobs before robots replace them different people mean different things by training but it runs the gamut from pre school to vocational school redistribution whether this is simply taxes on wealthy robot owners state ownership of robots or some kind of robot share ownership plan the idea is the same spread the returns from owning robots around to everyone one interesting thing i see is that the robo pessimists tend to be more worried about training you have to keep providing people with skills to compete with robots but it is important that people work or can work or should work robo optimists tend to be more worried about redistribution how do we reallocate ownership or the proceeds of ownership so that everyone can maintain living standards the more i thought about it this week the more i think the important distinction between the optimists and pessimists is in their attitudes towards work the optimists ultimately see the decline in working hours for humans as a good thing yes there are issues with distribution but those details can be attended to how great will the world be when we all only have to work 5 hours a week the pessimists see the decline in work hours as a distinct problem this need not be because they have some puritanical need to see people act busy but rather because they don t see how we could solve the distributional issues necessary to ensure people can afford a basic living standard the best we can do is to ensure that people can continue to work full time in order to meet their needs how awful will the world be when we can all only work 5 hours a week as i said above i tend to be a weak robo optimist i like brynjolfsson and mcafee completely agree that robots ai will create a drag on the demand for human labor and in particular unskilled labor my robo optimism isn t a belief about technology it is a belief that we can figure out how to manage the glide path towards shorter work hours while maintaining living standards for everyone it s a good thing that we ll have to work less and there remains a little piece of strong robo optimism lurking inside of me i don t think work less is really well defined we will likely have to spend less time working for wages to afford the basic material goods in our lives but that doesn t mean we won t spend lots of our time working for each other doing other things whether that work is paid in wages or not is immaterial share this share on x opens in new window x share on facebook opens in new window facebook share on reddit opens in new window reddit email a link to a friend opens in new window email like loading posted in uncategorized 17 replies roman history reading posted on december 10 2015 by dvollrath 15 note the growth economics blog has moved sites click here to find this post at the new site this really has nothing to do with economic growth so feel free to dismiss it my most recent hobby reading has been on the fall of the roman republic and the emergence of the empire under augustus i ve got a nice little reading list if you are interested in the topic or time period or looking for gifts for that special nerd in your life tom holland s rubicon the last years of the roman republic is a great introduction to the era he writes in an engaging style but provides enough information and analysis to make you think it s not just a then this battle happened kind of history book richard allston s romes revolution death of the republic and birth of the empire argues that you have to understand the nature of roman social networks to understand what happened to allow the republic to die the republic survived because the networks of major families were in something like a balance of power caesar and then augustus broke that balance of power by creating a network outside of the major families the legions whether this was inevitable the balance could not hold necessary to limit civil war or desirable was the old balance so great is not something allston takes a firm stand on but he describes nicely how the senate got coopted into the new augustan network ronald syme s the roman revolution is a classic in this area written in 1939 it is one of those books that presumes the reader is already educated in classical history so i d suggest trying some of the others first before you tackle this one unless of course you graduated from oxford in 1917 for all that it is an excellent book albeit quite grim syme see s caesar and augustus as somewhat inevitable given the inherent problems that the roman republic had with administrating an empire like allston it was about the persona network of power that augustus built not any grand political theories that created the empire h h scullard s from the gracchi to nero a history of rome 133 bc to ad 68 is another classic in this arena a little more accessible than syme s work and not a bad intro the nice aspect is that it covers the early part of this period with more depth than most there are two reasons the gracchi brothers are often used as the start of this story first because they were the first to take full advantage of the position of tribune to veto senate legislation asserting the power of the plebs second because the senate oligarchy got so spooked by this that they had the gracchi killed which opened the door to violence as a legitimate political action gareth sampson s the collapse of rome marius sulla and the first civil war is not a great book it s very much and then this battle happened kind of history but the actors and time period are where i think much of the interest is at the republic starts to wobble as marius and then sulla use break the ice and use violence to assert their political power all in the name of the people caesar learned his lessons from these men tom holland s dynasty the rise and fall of the house of caesar is really about a different time he provides some background but the first part of this book is about how augustus built his dictatorship into a hereditary dynasty the second part is about how augustus various relatives tried desperately to screw this up i didn t find this book nearly as engaging as rubicon perhaps because the story of the early emperors is something i was more familiar with and the minutiae of palace intrigue gets a little old after a while plutarch s lives one of the classic original sources despite the fact that plutarch was writing himself from other sources regardless much of the story of this era is based on guys like plutarch so it is worth reading i think it s one of those things to read after you ve exposed yourself to the general story because plutarch is a little sloppy about name usage places and dates appian s the civil wars again an original source that forms a lot of the basis of later history as you can glean from the title the period leading up to the establishment of the empire is a series of civil conflicts not a single one you have generally speaking a running series of conflicts between populares those claiming to represent the people and optimates those claiming to represent the traditional republic over who will actually be in charge the gracchi s versus the senate is one brief skirmish marius versus sulla turns into full scale war caesar versus pompey is a really just an extension of that war augustus versus antony loses a little of this thread as by then it is simply a slugfest over who gets to be the dictator but another book to read after you ve got the essential history in your head i won t claim that everything i read here is fraught with deep contemporary relevance but there are some interesting elements of the roman world around the time of the end of the republic that have parallels worth thinking about technological disruption an influx of slaves from the east eliminates jobs for roman citizens creating a class of people with a lot of uncertainty and little to lose increasing wealth disparities the landowners who owned the slaves consolidated land becoming even richer and displaced even more common romans citizenship questions italian allies of the romans had helped defeat carthage and win the east but were not citizens this bothered them but the idea of making them citizens bothered the existing romans who had little more than their political rights as assets external threats in the middle of this period a new wave of gauls descends on italy scaring the out of rome and people quickly abandoned traditional limits on the power of the consul in order to ensure safety once granted the legions would never really relinquish this power even as the effective dictator changed marius sulla pompey caesar antony augustus it s a fascinating period of time enjoy share this share on x opens in new window x 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