Chapter 1: What historical events are compared to the current AI job crisis?
A lot of people who work in artificial intelligence are talking about February of 2020, because in February 2020, normal life was about to end. The COVID-19 pandemic response would shut down schools and businesses and travel. At that point, very few of us had an inkling of what was to come, but the crisis that would upend American society for years continued. It's really been underway for weeks.
Chinese health officials are trying to identify what's causing a pneumonia outbreak in a southern city.
And a lot of people in the tech industry are saying that moment for COVID is this moment for generative AI. The world is shifting and we just don't fully appreciate or understand how much it's happening. They're excited. They're also worried. Take a listen to Dario Amadei, CEO of the AI company Anthropic, talking about his own company's product.
Chapter 2: How are AI advancements affecting job security?
It's possible it'll all be okay, but I think that's too sanguine an approach. I think we do need to be raising the alarm. That is from an interview with CNN. Amadei predicts AI may result in 10 to 20% unemployment soon, like single-digit years from now soon. Mustafa Suleiman was even more blunt in an interview with the Financial Times. He is the chief executive of Microsoft AI.
I think that we're going to have a human level performance on most, if not all professional tasks. So white collar work where you're sitting down at a computer, either being, you know, a lawyer or an accountant or a project manager or a marketing person. Most of those tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months.
All of a sudden, everybody is freaking out about AI job loss.
Chapter 3: What predictions do AI CEOs have about unemployment rates?
We'll unpack whether and how you should be worried. From NPR, I'm Scott Detrow. It's Consider This from NPR. AI CEOs talk a lot about the potential of AI to cure diseases, generate enormous wealth, solve some of humanity's most vexing problems. But as you heard earlier, they're also surprisingly direct in talking about the potential downsides.
And a big one, one that we're all of a sudden hearing a lot more about, is what it could mean for our jobs. It is easy to panic when you start reading about computers replacing humans. So we wanted some perspective from people who are watching AI's impact on the economy closely.
I called up Kelsey Piper, a staff writer at The Argument, and Martha Gimbel, executive director of the Yale Budget Lab, to get a sense of this AI moment and some possible AI futures. Let's start with that.
Chapter 4: What specific examples illustrate AI's capabilities today?
It feels like in the past few weeks, this conversation about AI job loss has bubbled out of the tech world and into the mainstream. I mean, I, for one, have gotten like a half dozen texts from freaked out friends sending stuff around like, what's going on here? Martha, why do you think this is happening right now?
Part of it is that there legitimately has been an acceleration in what the technology can do over just the last couple of months. I think there's also a broader issue, which is that people are just incredibly anxious about the economy right now and where it's going.
If you look at whether people think they're going to lose their job in six months relative to where the unemployment rate currently is, they're really negative. And then, of course, when people are piling on saying that we aren't going to have any jobs in two years, that's not going to help.
That does create some anxiety. Kelsey, you have been covering AI since ChatGPT was a twinkle in Sam Altman's eye. Can you explain to us
Chapter 5: What does current data say about AI-related job loss?
Some specific examples of what these models can do now that they couldn't do a year ago, six months ago.
Yeah. So the biggest launch in the last six months has been the wide launch of agent models, which are instead of just responding to you in a chat screen, they go out and do things. The biggest thing they do is code. They are really remarkably good at writing code. A year ago I was hearing from people, it's nice because you can like ask it some questions and it will speed up your coding.
Six months ago I was hearing from people, it's kind of like having a grad student that you can ask to run some analyses for you. Now I'm hearing from programmers. I don't really write code anymore. I just write a spec and then the AI builds the code that I ask them to build.
Chapter 6: How is the Industrial Revolution relevant to AI job displacement?
So this is a specific thing that gets better and better and more and more autonomous and that is a real trend that is happening.
Very much so.
Okay. So, Martha, a lot of jobs are theoretically at risk, but I want to start by looking at what we actually know already. You and your colleagues at the Budget Lab have been looking at the actual data. What does it show, so far at least, about AI-related job loss?
That there really isn't any, certainly at the macroeconomic level. You can look at the technology and you can see the potential, but you need to remember that technological-related labor market disruption is is not instantaneous. It happens in the context of IT policies, company concerns about liability, broader economic growth trends.
Chapter 7: What role do government policies play in AI job impacts?
And so I think it's really important to keep all of those things in mind when talking about what jobs are going away, becoming more popular, and how fast this may happen.
That is what is happening now. That is what has been happening over the past year. That doesn't mean things couldn't change going forward. And I know you and your colleagues have compared this in many ways to the Industrial Revolution. Why is that a good way to think about this?
I think the thing about the Industrial Revolution is you did see a really big shock to labor. I think sometimes you hear economists talk and we will say – at the end of technological change, living standards are higher, we are always better off. I do want to emphasize the period of disruption can be really, really hard for people.
Chapter 8: What advice should workers consider regarding AI and job security?
I am very grateful that I have a job that is more highly paid and I have higher living standards than I also would not have wanted to be a weaver during that time period. You know, their lives became really, really hard. And I do think we need to think about, is our social safety net prepared for the type of disruption that could possibly be coming?
And Kelsey, I know you spend a lot of time, you know, really optimistically thinking about worst case scenarios of AI. Yep. Where does the industrial revolution type scenario fit there? Like, do you think that is the high end worst case scenario? Or how are you thinking about this right now when you think about... what could happen over the next five to 10 years?
Yes. So I think Martha is entirely right that we have not yet seen significant AI-associated job loss. I think almost everybody who's worried about this, what they're doing is not so much, oh, I've already lost my job to AI.
Most of what people are saying is, all right, imagine that we learned the new class of students entering the workforce in 2028 was going to be 10 million people, 100 million people, and all of them are willing to work for pennies. Maybe in the long run, the economy will end up being much wealthier because of this huge influx of productive labor.
But as people who will be competing with that productive labor, we are not necessarily thrilled. So if you think that that's where AI is going, millions and millions of AI agents that will work basically for free, then I think people are completely right to be scared of that. That will probably, in the absence of very decisive policy action, make your life worse.
Both of you are saying in different ways a lot of the outcome will depend on policies, federal government policy, state government policy. Are you seeing those policies being carried out, serious conversations in any way, shape or form right now?
I think that right now the government is being caught very flat-footed. But one thing that we saw with COVID was that if a shock does hit very suddenly and affect a huge share of the American public, Congress can move into action very fast. But that's not the only way this is guaranteed to happen.
And if instead you have much more creeping job loss and disruptions, I think it's very easy to imagine Congress not getting their act together.
Yeah. Yeah. I want to go entirely analog. I hate this all. And I'm just going to get offline. Both of you think about this a lot more than most people. What is like one thing you would say to somebody in the job arc right now? Martha?
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