> Automation alone did never reduce jobs significantly.
Unless you mean "all jobs across the entire economy", this is pretty obviously false. People used to weave fabrics by hand, make screws and nails by hand, bake bread by hand. These jobs hardly exist anymore.
Of course this did not imply that all jobs disappeared and the economy collapsed. But the sense in which "AI is not replacing workers" is contingent on specific features of software development, not about automation in general.
But that suggests that if AI were to displace all programming ever, then as long as there were still some jobs, you would still consider that "AI is not replacing workers". Does that not stretch the meaning of "not replacing"?
It won't cause significant global unemployment. People would be doing some garbage work and still getting paid, instead of a desk-based white collar work.
Unless you mean "all jobs across the entire economy", this is pretty obviously false. People used to weave fabrics by hand, make screws and nails by hand, bake bread by hand. These jobs hardly exist anymore.
Of course this did not imply that all jobs disappeared and the economy collapsed. But the sense in which "AI is not replacing workers" is contingent on specific features of software development, not about automation in general.