Automation creates new jobs by way of resistance

Laying the camera, the phonograph and the printing press over the same frame yields an inductive pattern of five repeating stages: there was pain, automation emerged to ease it, fear and resistance arose, and once institutions were put in order, new prosperity and new jobs followed. The printing press reduced the number of scribes but gave rise to the profession of the writer who earns money from writing, as well as to educational institutions and universities; after the camera, painters and galleries actually increased. Apply to jobs the economic paradox that greater efficiency looks as if it should cut total consumption but in reality spreads use to more places and raises the total, and the forecast that work will shrink holds only on the premise that a field's utility is fixed at its current level. The new jobs cited are trainers who teach robots to suit each site's different conditions, quality managers for on-site AI systems and AI legal mediators, and a Korean program that turns the tacit knowledge of master craftspeople in manufacturing who are nearing retirement into agents is also mentioned. The conclusion is that the crux is not the technology but a distribution system that keeps returning revenue to those who supply the knowledge.

This is a note: my own write-up after reading several sources. It has no source link; events checked against a source are kept as records.