2min chapter

"Hexapodia" Is the Key Insight: by Noah Smith & Brad DeLong cover image

Hexapodia XLIX: We Cannot Tell in Advance Which Technologies Are Labor-Augmenting & Which Are Labor-Replacing

"Hexapodia" Is the Key Insight: by Noah Smith & Brad DeLong

CHAPTER

The Importance of Individual Power in Technology

"I think that yes, it matters a lot what kind of technologies are being pursued by a society," he says. "Individual power, individual power has little to do." The author is currently in Japan and will return on the seventh of August.

00:00
Speaker 2
Yes, it is getting quite a lot of nice press, although I think it grossly overestimates the extent to which it was an interesting book, but one that struck me as much more optimism of the will and actually understanding how it was that one got.
Speaker 1
So you read the book. That is great. Well, we should do that after the seventh when I come back from Japan, and at that time I will have read the book.
Speaker 2
Which will be the seventh of August?
Speaker 1
The seventh of August. That is when we should get them on. I can definitely get Simon on. I don't know Diron at all. But let's get back to what this book talks about. My understanding is that it's basically an extended discussion of the idea that there are labor augmenting and labor displacing technologies and that both of those things have happened throughout history.
Speaker 2
Yes. The point of Asimov, Lou, and Johnson is that you can make a difference in terms of which technologies a society pursues and which technology a society pursues depends on whether the people are actually active, engaged, able to wield social power to demand that the elite pursue labor augmenting rather than placing technologies. And I think that's basically wrong. I think that yes, it matters a lot what kind of technologies are being pursued by a society, but that individual power, individual power has little to do.
Speaker 1
Let's unpack a bit of this. So when I started thinking about this idea, it was not from reading that book, but it was from reading a number of articles that sort of made similar arguments that we should try to shape the direction of technology toward things that will complement humans rather than things that will replace. But when I thought, my first thought was, okay, think back to the late 1800s when we're inventing all these industrial technologies of what we now call the second industrial revolution. Right. The, you
Speaker 2
know, we invented science age.
Speaker 1
Right. You know, we had like cars and planes and and like,
Speaker 2
organic chemicals and steel and elevators and plastics and so forth.

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