People have long feared that mechanization might cause mass unemployment. This never happened because, as old professions became obsolete, new professions evolved, and there was always something humans could do better than machines. Yet this is not a law of nature, and nothing guarantees it will continue to be like that in the future.
Interpretation
Mechanization has historically not led to mass unemployment due to the emergence of new jobs that machines cannot perform as well as humans.
In this quote, Yuval Noah Harari addresses a common concern about mechanization and its potential to cause widespread job loss. He points out that while past trends show that as some professions become obsolete due to technology, new roles have often arisen that require uniquely human skills, ensuring that employment levels remained stable. However, he warns that this trend is not guaranteed to persist indefinitely, suggesting that we must remain vigilant about the evolving nature of work in the face of technological advancement.
In practice
In a discussion about the future of work during a corporate seminar.
We control the world basically because we are the only animals that can cooperate flexibly in very large numbers. And if you examine any large-scale human cooperation, you will always find that it is based on some fiction like the nation, like money, like human rights.
I titled the book 'Homo Deus' because we really are becoming gods in the most literal sense possible. We are acquiring abilities that have always been thought to be divine abilities - in particular, the ability to create life. And we can do with that whatever we want.
The notion of superhumans is using bioengineering and artificial intelligence to upgrade human abilities. If they use the power to change themselves, to change their own minds, their own desires, then we have no idea what they will want to do.
Techno-humanism aims to amplify the power of humans, creating cyborgs and connecting humans to computers, but it still sees human interests and desires as the highest authority in the universe.
The most important question in 21st-century economics may well be, 'What should we do with all the superfluous people, once we have highly intelligent non-conscious algorithms that can do almost everything better than humans?'
Take Google Maps or Waze. On the one hand, they amplify human ability - you are able to reach your destination faster and more easily. But at the same time, you are shifting the authority to the algorithm and losing your ability to find your own way.
I'm working on artificial intelligence. Actually, natural language understanding, which is to get computers to understand the meaning of documents.
I'm interested in Linux because of the technology, and Linux wasn't started as any kind of rebellion against the 'evil Microsoft empire.'
If you and your skills are a complement to the computer, your wage and labor market prospects are likely to be cheery. If your skills do not complement the computer, you may want to address that mismatch. Ever more people are starting to fall on one side of the divide or the other. That's why 'average is over.'
Once the automobile appeared you could have predicted that it would destroy as many people as it did.
The new source of power is not money in the hands of a few, but information in the hands of many.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
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