The debate continues –
“Vardi, a professor
at Rice University and Guggenheim fellow, ... suggested
AI could drive global unemployment to 50%, wiping out middle-class jobs and
exacerbating inequality.
Unlike the
industrial revolution, Vardi said, “the AI revolution” will not be a matter of
physically powerful machines that outperform human laborers, but rather a
contest between human wit and mechanical intelligence and strength. In China
the question has already affected thousands of jobs, as electronics
manufacturers, Foxconn and Samsung among them, develop precision robots to
replace human workers.”
McKinsey on workplace automation
Related:
Technical Paper –
Robots: Curse or Blessing? A Basic Framework
by Jeffrey D. Sachs, Seth G. Benzell, and Guillermo LaGarda
ABSTRACT
Do robots raise or lower
economic well-being? On the one hand, they raise output and bring more goods
and services into reach. On the other hand, they eliminate jobs, shift
investments away from machines that complement labor, lower wages, and
immiserize workers who cannot compete. The net effect of these offsetting
forces is unclear. This paper seeks to clarify how economic outcomes, positive or
negative, depend both on specific parameters of the economy and public policy.
We find that a rise in robotic productivity is more likely to lower the welfare
of young workers and future generations when the saving rate is low,
automatable and non-automatable goods are more substitutable in consumption,
and when traditional capital is a more important complement to labor. In some
parameterizations the relationship of utility to robotic productivity follows a
“noisy U” as large innovations are long-run welfare improving even though small
innovations are immiserizing. Policies that redistribute income across
generations can ensure that a rise in robotic productivity benefits all
generations.