In a 1938 article, MIT’s president argued that technical progress didn’t mean fewer jobs. He’s still right.

Compton drew a sharp distinction between the consequences of technological progress on “industry as a whole” and the effects, often painful, on individuals.

For “industry as a whole,” he concluded, “technological unemployment is a myth.” That’s because, he argued, technology "has created so many new industries” and has expanded the market for many items by “lowering the cost of production to make a price within reach of large masses of purchasers.” In short, technological advances had created more jobs overall. The argument—and the question of whether it is still true—remains pertinent in the age of AI.

Then Compton abruptly switched perspectives, acknowledging that for some workers and communities, “technological unemployment may be a very serious social problem, as in a town whose mill has had to shut down, or in a craft which has been superseded by a new art.”

  • Asocil@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    That’s only text generation, but we see AI art everywhere. Just think that every piece of AI art you see could have been comissioned.

    Hell, Prince of Persia:The last crown launched with a character that had ai voice over

    Is worth mentioning that you only scratched the surface of chat bots. ViewGrabber on Youtube shows how chat bots now can have character cards, a description of the world they live in, their relation with others, a history of every event that happened…

    The potential of that is shown in this video of Two Minute Papers which shows a full AI video game company powered by ChatGPT that has made games you can play: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zlgkzjndpak