David Autor

And you can't just say, oh, I guess I can't do that anymore.

I'll become a software engineer.

I'll become a lawyer.

I'll become a doctor.

Most people, in general, if they're displaced from the expert work that they do, they end up doing something less expert.

When very big changes happen that devalue skill sets that are used by a lot of people, that has a very direct and acute cost to the people whose livelihoods are hugely disrupted.

And not just their livelihoods, but the whole basis on which they make a living.

I don't think any two technologies have followed the same route.

And whenever someone says, will this time be different?

You should always say, yeah, of course.

But all previous times were also different.

The era of electrification was very different from the era of telecommunications.

The information age was very different from the Industrial Revolution.

What makes AI distinct?

It doesn't just follow simple rules.

For most machines, the best case scenario is they do exactly what they're supposed to do.

What's different about AI is it'll do things it wasn't designed to do specifically.

It was discovered that AI was really good at computer programming.

That was never the intention of large language models.

They were trying to learn English language or natural language.