What does innovation in automation mean for the economy as it pertains to people?
Soundtrack: Machines work, by B(iftek) (video clip).
Daron Acemoglu has written much on the economics of modern automation recently(Acemoglu and Restrepo 2020, 2018, 2020).
Many others have been thinking about this for a long time. It is tricky. What even is the role of manufacturing in the economy? How much does automation affect dematerialised economies? How about at the singularity?
As usual, Scott Alexander’s opinion might not be definitive but it does point to some interesting stuff: Technological Unemployment: Much More Than You Wanted To Know.
Various questions about the economics of social changes wrought by ready access to LLMs, the latest generation of automation. This is a short-to-medium-term frame question, whatever “short” and “medium” mean. The big question here is whether [AI Automation is different](.
For that, see Economics of AI automation.
Longer-term, some folks might also be interested in whether AI will replace us with grey goo or turn us into raw feedstock for building computronium etc.