A World Without Work (2020) by Daniel Susskind looks at how the author things that with advances in AI work will become less available for many people. Susskind looks are fairly well explored territory. Quite a number of other people seem to believe that the job apocalypse is about to arrive.
The book does make some good points. Susskind nicely says that highly advanced narrow AI, as opposed to general AI, will start to take jobs. Susskind is impressed by AI’s ability to play Go better than any human. He does, nicely take into account the way that IBM’s Watson, after winning Jeopardy, has failed to actually generate much income for the company. This doesn’t rattle his faith in AI though. It’s not clear if Susskind has ever had a go at trying AI himself. He would be well advised to read some books that are a bit skeptical of AI such as ‘You look like a Thing and I love you’.
Susskind does go through false alarms about the end of jobs that have occurred previously and he does not that we have gone from a world where 95% of people worked in agriculture to a world where ~2% do and from where 30% of the workforce worked in manufacturing to a world where less than 10% do. But Susskind believes that because AI will take over non-routine work this time is different. He doesn’t make the case well enough that it actually will be though. Critically Susskind barely seems to look at the many jobs that are not just cognitive. It’s hard to work out how many people work at a desk, but according to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics only 40% of people work sitting down. This indicates a lot of people are moving around and interacting a lot with the environment. For a book written in 2020 Susskind also doesn’t look enough at the relative failure of self-driving vehicles. They will, probably come in the 2020s, but even that is far from certain. And really, driving is a task that many people accomplish along with other tasks they perform. It is not as varied as a job like, say, plumbing, home repair or gardening. If jobs like these still exist it’s hard to believe that work is going to rapidly decline over the next two decades or so at least.
Susskind does, nicely consider the statistics that despite a lot of AI being around unemployment hasn’t increased. Instead he points to participation rates that have slightly decreased and have in particular decreased for men and particularly young men who now have the internet and amazing video games to provide a low cost alternative to the often less emotionally rewarding world of work.
Susskind then goes on to suggest that the answer to these issues is unlikely to be education because we’ve probably educated ourselves to the point of diminishing returns and that sending everyone to university probably isn’t worth it. So instead Susskind suggests that Big Government is needed to redistribute even more wealth. Susskind doesn’t pause to ponder how the redistributive state is already the biggest that it’s been in history. He then goes on to suggest that big tech needs to be reined in by committees of the worthy. He does, nicely point out that in many ways their economic power isn’t that great and also points out how Microsoft were seen as the great computing monopoly of the 1990s but who are now seen as an underdog against Google and that their domination of desktop operating systems is no longer seen as a great threat. Instead he believes that the political power of big tech through social media and search needs to be reined in. Here Susskind is not on strong ground and it’s also worth noting that this strays from his book about the future of work to being ‘why government should direct big tech’.
A World Without Work looks at a genuinely interesting question, that of whether AI is going to take all our jobs. Susskind doesn’t make the case that it really will strongly enough, but he does make a worthwhile effort in looking at important issue. He’s clearly a very smart guy and writes well and has read widely about the topic. However it’s hard to imagine many people who were not convinced prior to reading this book would be convinced by his case. Still, the book is worth reading for anyone interested in the topic.
ReviewSien 