Labor Day Special: Will AI Bring About a New Industrial Revolution?
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What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
There's this huge gap between the technology racing ahead, the capabilities are much better. And part of that's because a lot of smart people and literally hundreds of billions of dollars are being invested in that. On the other side, we're investing very little in understanding how to transform the economy, what this means for labor, for productivity, for work.
Hi, everybody, and welcome to Here's the Scoop from NBC News. I'm Yasm Bisugin. Happy Labor Day. It is the unofficial end of summer, which is sad, but we do celebrate by taking the day off before we have to work a lot. So the tradition of Labor Day started after the Industrial Revolution when a huge technological shift changed the way that we work for the good and the bad. And that is happening again today with artificial intelligence. And just like back then, there are people who say AI is the best thing ever for the economy for prosperity, and others who are ringing alarm bells. So today on the show, we're gonna take a look at how AI is affecting the job market and how we can prepare ourselves for the AI revolution.
That. I want to bring in Eric Brinjelson. He's Professor and Senior Fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI and director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab. Hi, Eric.
Good to be here, guys.
Great to have you. Um, so I wanna start off with this comparison to the industrial revolution, because we do hear this a lot, in which AI is kind of like The steam engine, right? Is that a fair comparison?
I think so. Um, there are some similarities.
What is the historical link between Labor Day and the Industrial Revolution?
You know, the steam engine ignited the industrial revolution and one of the things it did was it augmented our muscles. Now we have a technology that's augmenting our minds. I think that's going to be as big or bigger as the industrial revolution and probably transform the economy a lot faster.
Okay, so you said transform the economy a lot faster because there are those that say, whether or not you're a pessimist or an optimist when it comes to this AI revolution, that it's gonna happen pretty quickly, right? And they're looking at possibly the next five years. Do you think that is that is likely, or is that the optimistic? Perspective.
Well, there'll be certainly changes that happen within the next five years. I I think productivity is gonna grow a lot faster than say the Congressional Budget Office is predicting. We're gonna see businesses changing a lot. I don't think we're gonna see mass unemployment or anything like that. That's some of the more apocalyptic predictions. Um this will continue to play out over decades, but the transformation that we'll start seeing, I think we're already seeing the inklings of it right now, is going to accelerate over the next five. Yeah.
Are we already seeing these massive productivity gains from AI? Like is the revolution already here, or are we heading towards it?
I'd say we're heading towards it. Um, you know, we have a paper called Canaries in the Coal Mine that that basically says you look for these early signs of change. Um, some of the early signs we see in productivity, we see uh call centers. I did a paper with uh Danielle Lee and Lindsay Raymond where we found that call centers had up to 30, 35 percent more productivity. Uh we're seeing people who've done studies of coding and and uh writing software. Where you get also double digit, some cases triple digit productivity gains. But if you look at the broader economy, that hasn't spread that much. And so overall productivity is still fairly muted, a little, you know, close to two percent. Maybe if you if you squint, it's a little higher than it used to be.
Maybe Um, but we're not seeing a broad takeoff yet. That's totally expected. Uh, you know, we we've done research, we call it the productivity J curve, where initially it takes a Yeah. while for productivity to to, you know, build up steam and then it starts taking off after a few years. And I think we're in that point where the economy's just turning the corner.
Here's the thing though, companies are investing huge in AI right now.
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Chapters
6 chapters
1
What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
0:01–1:40
2
What is the historical link between Labor Day and the Industrial Revolution?
1:40–5:56
3
How does Erik Brynjolfsson compare AI to the steam engine of the original Industrial Revolution?
5:56–10:01
4
When do experts expect the biggest AI‑driven productivity gains to appear?
10:01–13:20
5
What early evidence shows AI boosting productivity in call centers and coding?
13:20–18:18
6
Why are current AI investments outpacing research on labor and economic impacts?
18:18–33:21
Speakers
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