I wouldn’t say “every time new technology appears” since portrait painters definitely got replaced by photography as a widespread industry and a structural shift did happen. Technology in general tries to reduce human effort because human effort is expensive. Any expense that can be shaved down year after year to make more profits will be made regardless of if the quality is consistent. AI doesn’t need to be as good as creatives to replace them (either in part or in whole) eventually. It just needs to be “good enough”. And the thing about technology is that it’s always trying to get to a point to replace people whether it’s there yet or not. Photography couldn’t replace portrait painters initially due to color and image quality, but it eventually got there.
Of course, the long-term goal of automation is to reduce labor, but current AI is nowhere near replacing human workers. Right now, it’s just a tool that speeds up certain tasks with, as the article notes, very mixed results. That said, we’ve seen steady increase in automation since the Industrial Revolution without mass unemployment. Instead of work disappearing, it is merely transformed. Portrait painters fade out, camera operators emerge. The jobs shift, but the need for human labor persists, just in new forms.
I wouldn’t say “every time new technology appears” since portrait painters definitely got replaced by photography as a widespread industry and a structural shift did happen. Technology in general tries to reduce human effort because human effort is expensive. Any expense that can be shaved down year after year to make more profits will be made regardless of if the quality is consistent. AI doesn’t need to be as good as creatives to replace them (either in part or in whole) eventually. It just needs to be “good enough”. And the thing about technology is that it’s always trying to get to a point to replace people whether it’s there yet or not. Photography couldn’t replace portrait painters initially due to color and image quality, but it eventually got there.
Of course, the long-term goal of automation is to reduce labor, but current AI is nowhere near replacing human workers. Right now, it’s just a tool that speeds up certain tasks with, as the article notes, very mixed results. That said, we’ve seen steady increase in automation since the Industrial Revolution without mass unemployment. Instead of work disappearing, it is merely transformed. Portrait painters fade out, camera operators emerge. The jobs shift, but the need for human labor persists, just in new forms.