David Autor

In fact, if we're as productive as we think we will be with AI, then it's much more accessible than it's ever been.

The challenges that we face are much more ones, I think, about the distribution of that productivity growth.

And that's because so much of that depends on the labor market.

AI is a tool.

It's not a force unto itself.

And that you should try to figure out how to use it effectively to complement what you do.

And whatever you do, you should be saying, well, how can I use this tool to increase what I can do?

The quality, the quantity, I think that's the opportunity.

But the way to think about it is I want to use it to collaborate, to take what I can do and make me more effective with it.

The first is when people are worrying about the quantity of jobs, they're worrying about the wrong thing.

They should be worried about the value of human expertise.

We could have lots of employment, but at lower wages, we work even harder.

But that wouldn't be a good world.

The world we want is one where human expertise remains valuable, complemented by our technology.

So we have higher standards of living for our work, not so we have to work harder to

The second thing to recognize is even if this works out well, let's say the world gets 5% better because of AI, those benefits will be very unevenly distributed.

And people whose expertise is devalued can be very damaged by that.

And others will ride this wave successfully.

And we've seen this with other transitions.

So no matter how well we think it's going to go, we need to invest in and support the people who are going to bear the brunt of those costs.