Nobel Prize-winning economist, Robert Shiller, is typical of many techno -optimists in arguing that we've always managed to absorb workers displaced by new technology — the handloom weavers became factory workers, the factory workers became office workers. This time, he says, will be no different. I want to suggest that this time is profoundly different. Previous technological revolutions unfolded over generations. For example, the transition from wooden sailing ships to diesel-driven steel ones took the best part of a century, the roll-out of electricity from street lights to industrial uses and finally households, took from the 1890s to the 1940s and it took almost 50 years for cars to become an essential part of daily life, thus giving both workers and societies more time to adapt. Today, change is happening within a single generation or less and unlike previous revolutions which disrupted one industry at a time, AI affects multiple sectors of the economy simultaneo...
Practising Geographer - nature culture places people