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Could AI be the next big thing without impacting the economy and labour market?
Computers revolutionized the construction industry. CAD software makes it far easier to draw buildings and share the drawings. Phones makes communications vastly easier. Instead of a worker getting stuck or having to physically find someone they can make a video call. Manuals and documents are freely available online. Online shopping makes order parts cheaper and easier while allowing builders to press prices. Accounting, scheduling, recruiting sales and other supporting activities are easier with computers. Even on the construction site computers control machines. A modern truck is full of software.
Yet the productivity in the construction industry has flat lined and is if anything declining. Land prices can take some blame but renovating a building has not become cheaper.
Could we see similar effects with AI? A company in 2035 has completely automated customer service, AI drafts contracts, does sales and codes. We may have self driving cars and humanoid robots. Yet we might see barely 2% GDP growth and no real boom in productivity. Why has the tech sector revolutionized work without dramatical increases in productivity and can the results be better in the coming 20 years?
I saw an Nvidia presentation where Ai can be used to simulate an assembly line or an entire factory or warehouse, including even modeling the physics of the entire process of moving and assembling goods. Surely, there will some productivity gains from all of this.
Why? Going from paper to digital was a much bigger step, and it created almost no productivity gains.
Right. Making paperwork easier to handle just meant the major constraint on the increase of paperwork was lost, so paperwork increased vastly.
A key factor is how productivity improvements are handled by legacy companies vs new entrants. The digital revolution probably didn’t change much for Ohio Widgets PLC, with its large unionised workforce and complex compliance requirements. For Shenzhen Widgets LLC, on the other hand, digitisation is essential for its ability to take customised CNC machined orders from anywhere in the world, translate them into Mandarin, and have them shipped anywhere in the world in 5 days.
If that's so much better, why haven't we seen a massive increase in GDP or quality of life?
what do you mean? by almost every metric life has gotten better the past century? GDP keep chugging along too
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