Sadiq Khan means ministers must do less, right?

So AI and the ‘bots are going to come for all our jobs and therefore:

Meanwhile, the London mayor, Sadiq Khan, has warned that AI could “usher in a new era of mass unemployment”.

Speaking in his annual Mansion House speech on Thursday, Khan said artificial intelligence could destroy a significant amount of jobs in London unless ministers act to help replace jobs taken over by the technology.

AI and the ‘bots are only going to be useful if they do indeed replace jobs. Drive up labour productivity that is, allow the production of more whatever per hour or unit of human labour. This does indeed mean that if production stays static then we will have excess human labour.

So, what do we do then? Well, we’ve been doing this for near three centuries now, since the Spinny Jenny. Or if we wish to go a little more extreme, for 6,000 years since the invention of the first rough and archetypal plough. So we’ve some experience of what happens next.

If we’ve more human labour available - as with an increase in any other economic resource - then we’ve more available to solve or sate some other human desire. This is also the same statement as saying that the AIs and the ‘bots will increase economic growth - we can have more of other things from that same set of economic resources.

The problem comes in what is it that we can have more of? There is a possibility space here. There are things that can be done - defined by the current state of technology- , there are things that people wish to be done, something defined by human desires and wants. The only method we’ve found over these 300 - OK, 6,000 - years to explore that space for the sweet spot of what can be and what is desired is to try everything, do more of what works and less of what doesn’t.

That is, we desire that free part of free market - anyone gets to try any- and every- thing and we observe the results.

So, what is it that ministers need to do as the AIs and the ‘bots come for all our jobs? Get out of the damn way and allow everyone to experiment. For unless we experiment we’re not going to find out what it is, from what can be done, that people want to be done with our newfound extra economic resources.

Anyone planning what is to be done, defining it from the centre, is making a logical, even categorical, error. No one knows so it cannot be planned, see? Thus the correct action from ministers is to abolish some to all of the laws that make it difficult to try doing new things, old things in new ways or even just more of the old in the old.

We can also put this another way. Increased labour productivity does indeed produce unemployment unless there is economic growth. Thus the solution to technological unemployment is economic growth. Stop making it difficult to experiment about doing new things, old things in new ways or even just more of the old in the old and the growth will happen and solve the problem of technological unemployment.

The action required from minsters is to kill the bureaucracy that impedes this process. Not that we think Sadiq Khan or any of the rest of them grasp this but that is the truth of the matter.

Tim Worstall