Among tech evangelists in Silicon Valley, it has become conventional wisdom that artificial intelligence will rapidly reshape the labour market, for better or worse. Economists, however, have often discussed AI’s impact with a scepticism bordering on dismissiveness.
Rising unemployment among young college graduates? The result of high interest rates and macroeconomic uncertainty. Dire predictions of widespread job losses? A failure to understand the lessons of past technological revolutions. Even the layoffs that companies themselves blamed on artificial intelligence were often chalked up to “AI-washing” from executives looking for something to blame other than their own mismanagement.
