UCL IIPP Book Launch: Power and Progress

[@AeneasGV]

John M. Keynes, in 1931, seeing the improvement in technological change and capital accumulation predicted that it would lead to a fifteen-hour week of work and better quality of life (in Europe and the United States). Some years later, Robert M. Solow, with his model for economic growth predicted that (in the long run) economies will converge reaching permanent growth through technological progress. The ”fifteen-hour of work” and the economic convergence between countries never happened, although productivity kept rising (due to the increase in technology and labour). The key question is why those predictions failed, while the technological change kept rising (leading the wealth and income of society upwards). The book and the panel questions are on the right path for answering the aforementioned, great work.

[@cordeiroantinazis]

Excellent questions by Cecilia Rikap. Looking forward to read the book, seems touching very important topics about current societal challenges

[@jaytsecan]

Very interesting discussion. Thank You!

[@mikeklein4949]

Roadbuilding to the future including the present. Thank you. By the way, who is listening to your smart watches? Just a thought.

[@mattgunter9674]

Hopefully, this kinds of dysfunctional twisting of history will become obsolete when people can ask an AI/LLM to clarify the general purpose of technology and the role of companies and the options available to individuals at various times in history. Market forces, will be shown as the predominant driver of long-term progress rather than "creative government policy".

[@tonywilson4713]

As an engineer who has worked in industrial control systems, automation and robotics for 30+ years I MUST take offense at something said in this by Simon Johnson at 13:48 regarding automation. He says, _"the last point is about automation so automation absolutely is always about replacing workers that's what it means you have a machine that does something the workers previously did."_ This is a meme pushed but *IGNORANT* Economists who have no idea what automation engineering is about or what it involves. Its one of a group of memes pushed by clowns who have no idea what goes on in manufacturing or any other industry because they only ever sit in their ivory towers and pontificate about how smart their latest theory is. In reality automation is often used to improve the productivity of a worker or group of workers OR to improve quality control. When Henry Ford started his production line he didn't get rid if workers he employed MORE of them because they were more productive. That also allowed him to pay them MORE MONEY. He had realised that by paying them more money his own workers would be able to also buy the cars they made and that increased his sales and his profits. Another infamous meme is that jobs have been lost to China because wages are to high. A company I did work for back in the mid 1990s made garden shed kits. Originally they had machines that could produce 1 type of panel at a time, but even the most basic garden shed has more than 1 type of panel because there is the door. as well as the roof. What they did was make batches of panels stack them all around a warehouse. Workers would go around and pick so many of certain panels that made up a particular shed and then put them in the box with the manual structural pack and fastner pack. We automated the panel machine so that it could make any panel. Instead of having 100s of $1,000s of panels in stock the machine simply made each panel necessary for a garden shed and they went straight in the box off the end of the line. Another person then put in the fastners, structural pack and manual, while another would then glue and stable the box shut and another would put the box on a pallet. JUST the saving in stock inventory paid for the new machine. NOBODY lost their job. Productivity went UP as did wages. I once asked the production manager if he was worried they'd move the factory to China. He just laughed and asked why? The Labor cost of each shed was under 2%. The reason why so many jobs went to China had little to do with labor cost. It had a lot to do with the cost of raw materials, things like steel, aluminum. MOST of all it had to do with very low energy costs. As to why Economists LIE about this. Its simple they either don't know the actual cost break downs of manufacturing or they don't want to admit they don't know the actual cost break downs of manufacturing. Worse its been their privatisation policies that have driven energy costs sky high and NONE of them will admit that. *Its just much simpler to point the finger at labor costs because everyone has heard that for so long that they know it will be believed.*

[@mattgunter9674]

Yes. these people are clueless about progress, much less about automation. This is why technological progress doesn’t benefit more people- because they just don’t “get it”. 🙉🙈🗣️

[@tonywilson4713]

@@mattgunter9674 Thanks. I find is so frustrating that we have so many people in the media just repeating the same memes again and again without any thought if they are right.

[@penguinjunk577]

I've spent 25 years in AI producing data for the public sector and am now studying at the IIPP. I didn't hear that comment in the same way as you are describing. Here is how I understood that statement: we use automation to replace people doing particular tasks or subtasks - e.g. those tasks that are repetitive, boring or are otherwise not the best use of humans capabilities. The automation means they no longer need to do that task/subtask. That does not mean that they will lose their jobs - that is not what "replace" means. Those workers can then work on other tasks that are not automated, ideally that they are much better suited to. His follow up detail on Henry Ford bears this out (although arguably the repetitive tasks they ended up doing were still not the best use of creative humans). In your example, automation meant that humans no longer need to organise the stocking of panels in advance of assembly - the machine handles this now, freeing up humans to focus on assembly and maybe even considering alternative product lines. BTW, I used to think economists are evil, which is why I started studying it. Turns out some are not only human and quite friendly, but they also occasionally step outside of their ivory towers. Who knew?

[@mattgunter9674]

@@penguinjunk577 I don't know where to start in order to explain how wrong/narrow this view on AI is. Jobs/wages don't just depend on automation, they depend on how much people will work for. (Markets and all, remember?). Also, we only have an economy with jobs because of division of labor and the need to coordinate activities to create value. AI will improve the dynamics of all of these factors by reducing the effort required. Will new jobs need to be created? (One job that seems to be greatly needed now more than ever is "economist who understands technology and value creation").🤷🏻‍♂

[@tonywilson4713]

@@penguinjunk577 Sorry but I am going to hurt your feelings a bit. I think the entire AI industry are some of the greatest pack of overrated lying scumbags in the history of science and technology. Like economists it might not apply to all but it certainly applies to most. *Your industry has completely mislead the general public over what your software and your algorithms actually are and how they actually work.* The general public actually believe that we have computers that can ACTUALLY THINK and its not even close. We don't even have a definition for what thinking actually is. I have been writing code for all sorts of things for over 40 years and know full well that you can't write code for something that's undefined. All that you people have ever done is create complex data analysis tools that MIMIC what a trained human can do. Somebody else coined the term "Stochastic parrot" but I think its pretty accurate. Your kind don't even know what automation is or how long its been a field of engineering. About 4 years ago the IT Industry started advertising for "Automation Engineers" which was a tag many 1000s of engineers had been using for decades. I finally called up a professor at a University that advertised a job for one to ask why they needed my skills. *HE HAD NO IDEA* that there were already engineers using the tag "Automation Engineer." When he asked how long people people had used the term I told him mostly since the start of the industrial revolution but historically for just over 2200 years from the time Hero of Alexandria wrote his book on machinery titled "Automata." You people live in La La Land and spout endless streams of nonsense masquerading as intelligence. You're a profession that's at the level of economists, lawyers and politicians.