I think it’s useful to talk about job displacement as well, even if it’s partial rather than full. We’ve talked about job displacement due to automation (most of which is unrelated to AI) for centuries, and it seems useful to me. It doesn’t assume that machines (e.g. AI) are solving tasks in the same way as humans would do; only that they reduce the need for human labour. Though I guess it depends on what you want to do—for some purposes, it may be more useful to look at AI capabilities regarding more specific tasks.
That’s a good point. I’m a little worried that coarse-grained metrics like “% unemployment” or “average productivity of labor vs. capital” could fail to track AI progress if AI increases the productivity of labor. But we could pick specific tasks like making a pencil, etc. and ask “how many hours of human labor did it take to make a pencil this year?” This might be hard for diverse task categories like writing a new piece of software though.
I think it’s useful to talk about job displacement as well, even if it’s partial rather than full. We’ve talked about job displacement due to automation (most of which is unrelated to AI) for centuries, and it seems useful to me. It doesn’t assume that machines (e.g. AI) are solving tasks in the same way as humans would do; only that they reduce the need for human labour. Though I guess it depends on what you want to do—for some purposes, it may be more useful to look at AI capabilities regarding more specific tasks.
That’s a good point. I’m a little worried that coarse-grained metrics like “% unemployment” or “average productivity of labor vs. capital” could fail to track AI progress if AI increases the productivity of labor. But we could pick specific tasks like making a pencil, etc. and ask “how many hours of human labor did it take to make a pencil this year?” This might be hard for diverse task categories like writing a new piece of software though.