I don't think AI will be a job-killer

In the long term; short-term, there could well be nasty disruption

I posted this on a blog, but it’s a big enough part of what I think that I’ll archive it here, too.

I find the conversation about jobs and AI to be utterly absurd, and I don’t know if it’s because I’m crazy or lots of other people are crazy.
I start with the idea that technology has replaced lots of jobs before. At some point in the past, pretty much 100% of people were directly involved in the extraction of resources from nature in order to make (their own) food. Now that figure is 2%. A similar shift, not quite as dramatic in size, occurred when advanced economies like the US shifted from manufacturing to services. This makes me think that technology replacing the jobs we do now does not mean that there will not be jobs in the future.
My second reference point is the continued existence of activities and jobs in music and chess. Electronic equipment can reproduce music with much higher quality than people; computers can play chess much better than people. And yet people continue to make music and to play chess; not only that, they continue to get paid for making music and playing chess. This indicates to me that the purpose of human participation in an activity is not to do it *the best*. Even if machines can do X better than people, people will continue to do X and make money off it.
My third reference is Tyler Cowen’s new service sector jobs posts, which document the amazing range of things that people are willing to pay other people to do.
Now, the implications of this are not particularly appetizing to me. I think it means that 50 years from now, almost everyone will be in the service industry, being a flunky, performer, teacher/childcarer, therapist, sex worker, or some combination thereof. But the idea that there won’t be jobs to do just sounds ridiculous. We’ll invent jobs, just as we always have.