A few weeks ago, New York Times columnist David Leonhardt hosted an online conversation about the impact that AI is already having on employment and how large a transition society may be facing with three prominent economists: MIT’s David Autor, the University of Virginia’s Anton Korinek, and Yale University’s Natasha Sarin. I found their discussion quite interesting at multiple levels. Let me summarize some of their key points.
The Near-Term Impact of AI on Jobs
“Before we look toward the future, let’s talk about the present,” Leonhardt began. “There is debate among economists about whether A.I. has already led to a meaningful amount of job loss. What do you each think?”
“The evidence is inconclusive,” said Professor Autor. Some widely discussed findings suggest that entry-level employment for young workers has declined in AI-exposed occupations such as software development and customer service. However, other recent business-cycle factors — such as tariffs and interest rates — may also be influencing hiring trends. “That said,” he added, “there’s every reason to believe that advancing A.I. will fundamentally change hiring and skill requirements across much of the economy. In many cases, I think we’ll see fewer people doing this work, and those who do it will be more expert, solving the thorny problems that A.I. currently cannot solve on its own.”
Professor Sarin also noted that the evidence is inconclusive. That “despite all the vibes and anecdotes you hear about A.I. labor market displacement, there just isn’t evidence in the data that this has happened in a meaningful way so far. … We don’t find differences in employment in the last few years between the occupations most exposed to A.I. and those least exposed.” That, she noted, should not be surprising. “It’s been only three years since the mass introduction of this technology, and it takes firms — and all of us — time to understand how to deploy it in ways that are truly transformative.”
Professor Korinek offered a different lens. While employment data may be ambiguous, he argued, investment data is not. “The leading A.I. labs aren’t making hundred-billion-dollar bets because they expect A.I. to have minor effects on the labor market. They are betting on achieving artificial general intelligence (A.G.I.), which could substitute for human labor across much of the economy.” He also mentioned that few people work at these labs relative to the scale of investment. “The employment effects we are looking for may simply be lagging indicators of a transformation that’s already locked in by the capital being deployed.” (more…)