{"id":2661,"date":"2025-10-30T11:45:41","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T11:45:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/weknow0.co.uk\/?p=2661"},"modified":"2025-11-18T11:13:21","modified_gmt":"2025-11-18T11:13:21","slug":"wallace-and-gromit-and-ais-distribution-problem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/weknow0.co.uk\/?p=2661","title":{"rendered":"Wallace and Gromit and AI’s Distribution Problem"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl models on display in Bristol. This file is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 International license<\/a>.<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

I have been watching Daniel Susskind’s lectures on AI and the future of work this week: Automation Anxiety<\/a><\/em> was delivered in September and The Economics of Work and Technology<\/a><\/em> earlier this week. The next in the series, entitled Economics and Artificial Intelligence<\/a><\/em> is scheduled for 13 January. They are all free and I highly recommend them for their great range of source material presented.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In my view the most telling graph, which featured in both lectures, was this one:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Original Source: Daniel Susskind A World Without Work<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Susskind extended the usual concept of the ratio between average college and university graduate salaries to those of school leavers to include the equivalent ratio of craftsmen to labourers which then gives us data back to 1220. There are two big collapses in this ratio in the data: that following the Black Death (1346-1353), which may have killed 50% of Europe’s 14th century population, and the Industrial Revolution (which slow singularity started around 1760 and then took us through the horrors of the First World War and the Great Depression before the graph finally picks up post Bretton Woods).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Susskind shows, the profits from the Industrial Revolution were not going to workers:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Source: The Technology Trap<\/a>, Carl Benedikt Frey<\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

So how is the AI Rush comparing? Well Susskind shared another graph:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Source: David Autor Work of the Past, Work of the future<\/a><\/em><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This, from 2019, introduced the idea that the picture is now more complex than high-skilled and low-skilled workers, now there is a middle. And, as Autor has set out more recently<\/a>, the middle is getting squeezed:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Key dynamics at play include:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n