Banking apps closed 99% of high street banks (here in the UK at least).
Amazon is basically destroying the shopping high streets.
Technology has a way of disrupting what we've been doing for generations. I think the whole AI thing isn't made up - we're going to see rapid change in a very short time frame. Personally I'm trying my hardest to adjust, as I don't want AI to "happen" to me, by learning the skills that I can only predict will be important.
* Some figures may have been pulled out of the air :)
Stats like this get thrown around a lot but it's worth considering that the ABSOLUTE numbers might not actually change that much over time.
With agriculture specifically, we can make some rough estimates that, before mechanization (say, 1760-1800 period), there was maybe 10^9 people on Earth and they were all employed in agriculture. So ~10^9 farm-workers.
As of 2024, FAO estimates of global agricultural workforce put the total at about 892 million; call it ~9x10^8. [1]
So, more precise (but perhaps not much more accurate) to say that mechanization put 10% of farm workers out of a job, not 99%.
Now, it certainly IS true that mechanization allows (or forces, depending on your perspective) 90% of the population of Earth to do something other than farming, which is the real point you were making - Technology DOES have a way of disrupting what we've been doing for generations.
[1] https://www.fao.org/statistics/highlights-archive/highlights...
> The agricultural sector employed 892 million people worldwide in 2022, which corresponds to 26.2 percent of total employment.
However, in the USA:
> Direct on-farm employment accounted for about 2.6 million of these jobs, or 1.2 percent of U.S. employment.[1].
The USA grows enough food to feed itself[2], so this indicates that either the rest of the world still hasn't mechanized farming (possibly due to poverty/cheap labor), or that crops in the rest of the world are particularly resistant to mechanization. If the rest of the world was at the same level of mechanization as the USA, the total number of people employed would be about 5% of what it you cited.
[1] https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/chart-gallery/58282 [2] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6041859/
China has been mechanizing in the last two decades and is up to ~73% overall but 80-90% in wheat, rice and maize.
Sub-Saharan Africa sits at ~10% tractor use across crop farmers, with Ethiopia at ~1% utilization in land prep, and Nigeria at 7% tractors/25% animals for "traction".
India & South Asia ~40-50% across all farming activities
India tilling/plowing "over 70-80%"
India sowing & Harvesting ~30-40%
Major contributors to these figures seem to be relative low cost of labor, lack of capital, farm fragmentation/small plots, and terrain.
I used to work with a guy that started a nonprofit providing tractors to sub-saharan africa. He routinely met farmers/land-owners who could technically purchase the machines, but would choose not to because the profit margin was actually higher if they used human labor. They would accept the machines as donations because at that point the cost of the machine actually made the machine viable economically against the human labor.
I imagine this also extends to politically unstable regions. Buying the machine "pencils" to an American who can be relatively reasonbly sure that they will be able to farm the land for the number of years required to recoup the expense of the machine, but less so for an individual not entirely certain that they will be allowed to own the land for that long.
I don't believe this is true. High street banks are still common. 99% closed means we previously had 100 times as many, which would be absurdly high. It's probably closer to 50% closed.
If I want to visit a branch I need to go to the next city.
It is nothing like the experience of growing up in the early 90's and what banks were then.
Consider that everyone did their banking in person and people dealt with a lot of cheques. Oh, and banks didn't tend to open at weekends, you had to find time during the week.
There was a need for a lot of tellers, and banks were incredibly busy places.
"99% closed" is obviously hyperbole, especially counting by branch, but if you were to count by tellers or by people visiting their bank, I could well believe it.
> Across the country, there are now barely 4,000 bank and building society branches, down 80 per cent in 40 years.
So, a big decline, but still 20x as many high street banks than what a 99% decline claims.
[1] https://www.ft.com/content/10ce1086-a9ae-4851-92e4-3b6efc8a0...
A lot of people that I know would strongly prefer to go to some brick and mortar shop. The problem is: most of items that I buy on the internet (e.g. on Amazon) are simply not easily available in a shop in my town (and I am not living in a small town).
For example:
- lots of obscure scientific books that are written in German or even English (I live in Germany)
- similarly: lots of rather niche belletristic books (think into the direction: some obscure novel recommendation on HN) often in various foreign languages
N.B. It is true that an important reason why Amazon got big among early computer enthusiasts in Germany in the 90s is that it was one of the few ways for easily getting computer science textbooks delivered from the USA - though with long delivery times.
- 3D printing supplies (why doesn't there exist a brick an mortar store for this?)
- very niche indie games (they are by now basically all sold on Steam, GOG, Epic Store or itch.io)
- very specific parts for Maker projects
- ...
So, the situation is not that people necessarily want to buy on the internet or specifically Amazon, but rather that there exists barely any way to get what they want in a brick and mortar store in even large cities.
Because it is not cheap or available if its not made in China.
At least in the US, there are roughly the same number of bank branches today as 20 years ago. And I think you would have to compare to hundreds of years ago to find anything like a 99% decline in farm laborers.
I’d make a similar bet for assembly programmers. People say “no one programs in assembly anymore”, but I’d guess today there are more assembly programmers than when everyone programmed assembly.
…never mind.
Technology, like AI, is a force multiplier. A lever.
It's not "technology did this or that", humans did using technology.
Selling stuff to people without them understanding the consequences is a technology, too.
Society does indeed evolve over time, but it's only in 8th grade history surveys that it can be presented so simply as you take for granted above.
It's good to reduce pain, but not to kill everything. At least not in one fatal fell swoop.
Yet Ikea, H&M, etc are thriving. COVID was supposed to be the deathknell for brick and mortar retail but I'm fairly sure it's bounced back. Buying a lot of stuff will just always be better in person.
Since you're so certain of this impact "AI" will have, what "skills" do you "predict" are required on the human end of this?
I have to admit that's a rhetorical question to demonstrate the absurdity of your stance. Don't make my eyes roll out of my head by insisting that "AI is indeed an absurd change, but we must acknowledge... (blah blah)" or whatever and double down.
We've had years of these silly takes and we're all fed up with the mass-plagiarism machine. It's not science fiction. It's a big lookup table for sale and wrapped in lies, and no it's not equivalent to other computation by definition. I'm sure you could run some people out of business that way, but not all. When the job is done did we really achieve "AI", or just ruin the economy by taking advantage of the feeble minded?
Any politician has a massive opportunity here to enforce the law. It's only a question if they'll keep pretending to be blinded by the science.
Not Flere-Imsaho:
I think if one made a serious effort, one could easily find a well-founded answer to this question that is based on a solid rational foundation.
The problem rather is: people (often in decision positions, but also employees who fear for their jobs) don't act rationally on AI:
- For example, managers firing good programmers because programmers are to be replaced by AI. By now you can find many reports of companies who try to convince their programmers that they fired "because of AI" to come back.
- Similarly, panicking employees who demand irrational restrictions on AI. EDIT: with this I mean for example "legal restrictions on AI with on a pretense of say 'AI is too dangerous for the public'".
These very non-rational factors and irrational actions are very hard to predict.
What is so irrational about avoiding AI altogether? If the dev gets the same or higher quality work done in the same amount of time without it (oh, yes they can/do) what is the risk?
What kind of sweatshop has such a bottleneck with dev time that they require AI? If the dev is micromanaged to the extent that they are told which tools to use, that's something else already.
Let's meet in the middle and say most devs, regardless of the extremity of their stance on AI, probably at least read Google AI summaries and copy-paste that code from time to time. I've never heard of anyone complaining about that. Brother, let me tell you that's 99% of the productivity boost we're gonna see until this upcoming AI winter is over again. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional.
Zero. Regrets. Outside of the rare errand where I need serious cargo capacity, or visiting family, cars are only for fun now.
As a non-"car person" once agreed with me: "Yep, I hate COMMUTING in a car. But I love DRIVING."
Are you arguing that AI companies will fail to achieve their goals, and perpetually be worse than human thought? That's currently a pretty fair bet, but if you're wrong it's got some heavy consequences.
Given how little Americans walk and how much blame their sedentary lifestyle has gotten for obesity and diabetes and so on, i don't think this is a good example.
EDIT: If anything it's something of a counter-example: of an activity that technology has made to a great degree superfluous, and which has to be added to one's lifestyle simply for the purpose of wellness.
Bearing the burden of a civilization-wide illness such as obesity and diabetes is such a cost. But, hey, at least a large amount of the country is designed in a way that mandates commute via cars and makes "adding to one's lifestyle simply for the purpose of wellness" even more inconvenient.
Only once we automate our whole existence away we will start grasping for true satisfaction; once automating away what's left is also automated away, we will truly, and finally, be successful as a species.
https://www.amazon.com/TurboChef-Electric-Countertop-Microwa...
I've saved no end of hours of transport thanks to Zoom and Teams meetings, and hybrid is now a thing (just not for me).
Bricks and mortar stores around here have been empty for years in some cases, and I'm the last person in the office who carries cash.
Cash is dead in many places. Stores all around me have "cash not accepted" signs.
For many Americans walking is dead. Sad but true. Cities got designed or redesigned to be car first.
Amazon put numerous types of stores out of business. There are entire categories of products that can now only be bought online.
Side note, but here in Australia smaller stores are starting to preference cash again due to high card fees that legally cannot be (directly) passed into the customer.
I think the solution is in education. Do not teach people about the things that are useful right now. Teach people to value the things that make their lives better.
I'm ok with thinking as a hobby. That's doing it because you value it. If there are not enough people doing it, the problem is that they don't value it or don't know how to value it.
That's ridiculous.
or even the chance to practice smiling while greeting a stranger
what are you gonna do, be an AI bro for 50 years telling me "just one more year bro"?
I'm already 30, I'm not gonna live till 80 reading unbearable ai bro comments.
> Steadily improving cheap quality you get for the most products
Have you proof read what you wrote? With your lack of specificity for the word "thinking", you're casting a rather broad argument; there is a troubling implications between your words.
* Trust what you're told, consume what you're sold; Do as you're bid, do as you're told.
* Don't question the script, don't step out of line; keep your "snowflake thinking" benign.
* The market knows best, so don't second-guess; Our Ford will provide, just consume and say yes.
Fooooord!^[1]
- [1] Brave New World; by Aldous Huxley
yes, but not in a meaningful way
> With your lack of specificity for the word "thinking", you're casting a rather broad argument;
that's intentional— specific = snowflake → broad = cattle. Same goes for craft vs at-scale manufacturing.
Also Ford was right about horses. Who's the horse now? I've been saying it from the horse perspective too for a while https://x.com/clehene/status/1768411925057347822
At the end of the day, your thoughts are important to everyone else but the "market"— you, your mom, etc. But the market doesn't care about your reasoning and hence can be "irrational" longer than you can be "right".
Also note that rational/irrational is a reasoning aspect. Automating it was on Aristotle's mind too.
It made it unnecessary to ride a horse.
> Amazon obsoleted brick and mortar stores
Pretty much did.
> payment cards made cash disappear
Pretty much did in China. A good example how something seems essential for someone is just completely replaceable for the others.