noemamag.com
Many of us are fearful for our jobs in the wake of the rise of artificial intelligence (AI), says David Autor. A recent Gallup poll found that 75% of US adults believe AI will lead to fewer jobs. But the fear is misplaced. The industrialised world is “awash in jobs”, and it’s going to stay that way.
Four years on from the start of the pandemic, the US unemployment rate has “fallen back to its pre-Covid nadir”. Total employment has risen to nearly three million above the pre-Covid peak. Falling birth rates and shrinking labour forces mean a shortage of workers is appearing across the industrialised world. Barring a big change in migration policy, the US and other rich countries “will run out of workers before we run out of jobs”.
AI will change the nature of the job market, but not change these demographic facts because AI will not replace humans, but rather “reshape the value and nature of human expertise”. Expertise is the “primary source of labour’s value” in the US and other industrialised countries. Jobs that require little of it command low wages – waiters, manual and care workers, and so on. Those that require years of education and training command higher wages.
But the kind of expertise in demand is in constant flux. Farriers and type-setters are no longer in such demand, for example. The era of artificial intelligence heralds another such transformation. The “utopian vision of the information age” was that it would flatten economic hierarchies by democr
