Stanford Economist Now Believes an AI Job Apocalypse Is Unlikely (washingtonpost.com)
- Reference: 0185105522
- News link: https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/08/22/211256/stanford-economist-now-believes-an-ai-job-apocalypse-is-unlikely
- Source link: https://wpintelligence.washingtonpost.com/topics/ai-tech/2026/08/19/wpi-conversation-why-an-ai-job-apocalypse-is-unlikely/?itid=hp_brand_promo_2
And Brynjolfsson "predicts that demand for experienced workers such as senior coders will still be high even if AI takes on more routine knowledge and coding work in the future."
> Earlier this month, Brynjolfsson and his colleagues at the Stanford Digital Economy Lab updated their widely publicized report, " [2]Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence," to reflect that they do not see widespread, economy-wide job displacement associated with AI...
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> Brynjolfsson: What has moved on the upside is productivity. Nonfarm business productivity growth is running over 2 percent, the best sustained stretch since the late-1990s boom... The gains [3]show up years after the investment , and they're starting to show up... By 2030, we will have enormously more capable AI, meaningfully faster productivity growth and an unemployment rate that looks unremarkable — somewhere in its historical range. That surprises people, but it's what the mechanism implies... [T]he technology is becoming much more powerful, and it's going to be even more powerful.
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> Secondly, there are huge implications for business and the economy, including some increases in living standards, but also, potentially, job disruption. And then, thirdly, we must act now to address this gap. We can't just sit back and wait for the tsunami to hit us. And one of the things we can do is put in place institutions, policies and research to make the technology more complementary — using AI to complement people so it creates more jobs. A common misconception among business managers is AI, in order to be effective, has to reduce jobs. That's just not true. You can use AI to increase employment and productivity at the same time. It's kind of a win-win...
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> Right now, tax policy is very skewed toward favoring capital versus labor — and, as a consequence, a lot of entrepreneurs and managers, they're basically being guided by the federal government to replace workers with machines. And I don't think that's necessarily what we'd like to have happen. From an economist's perspective, what you want to be doing is not mimicking and replacing things. You want to be extending and complementing — have humans do new things they never could have done before.
He acknowledges "real, persistent and widening" effects on entry-level jobs, with a labor market " [4]closing the on-ramp for people starting their careers ... If companies don't hire people at the base of the pyramid, then they're not going to have those people later when they need them."
One he points out that one company is instead using AI to speed up its training of young employees.
[1] https://wpintelligence.washingtonpost.com/topics/ai-tech/2026/08/19/wpi-conversation-why-an-ai-job-apocalypse-is-unlikely/?itid=hp_brand_promo_2
[2] https://digitaleconomy.stanford.edu/publication/canaries-in-the-coal-mine-six-facts-about-the-recent-employment-effects-of-artificial-intelligence/
[3] https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/mac.20180386
[4] https://it.slashdot.org/story/26/08/22/0418223/is-ai-really-to-blame-for-high-unemployment-among-recent-graduates-what-economists-say
Death of Expertise (Score:4, Insightful)
The apocalypse isn't job replacement, it's job training. ALL of the entry level jobs in most industries are going to be replaced by AI, and there will be no jobs available to train up the next set of tier 2 and 3 employees. The apprenticeship model that most of the world relies on is going to collapse. It will take a decade to realize the losses and by then it will be too late to train replacements.
Re: (Score:2)
I expect the prevailing thinking among the so called "tech giants" is that before the loss of level 1 talent would normally impact level 2, AI will be replacing level 2, and so on up the chain.
It's a risky gamble but the end game is clear - the job market WILL be disrupted and the ramifications of so many displaced workers may provoke an uprising.
Re: Death of Expertise (Score:1)
I don't believe either of these will happen. I think it's more likely to lower the barrier to entry. This was, in fact, exactly why the Luddites did what they did. In my case, AI has been a useful learning tool for fields I have no expertise in, or adjacent ones I've never touched. Sometimes it's just an incredibly powerful search engine, and sometimes it leads by example. It's because of AI that I have started to do frontend work -- without it I'd have needed to take a course, and even then it would have t
Re: (Score:2)
Except if you lower the entry-point to get to Lvl 2 while getting rid of Lvl 1, then you get total morons who wouldn't even be considered for Lvl 1 doing Lvl 2 work... so, what did all that accomplish?
Higher labor demand? What labor? There's less and less actual labor (y'know... us blue-collar workers) regular jobs and more and more office jobs for those who have the fancy piece of paper.
How do you increase demand for labor when manufacturers are looking to have less meatsacks around by AI-enabled automat
Re: (Score:2)
Last week I was struggling with sharing my main computer's resources with 3 other windows 11 machines. I used ChatGPT to navigate the details and got it done under the AI's direction. It all works now.
Then it hit me after the AI offered me the equivalent of a network engineering and Windows 11 systems administration set of courses, giving me the number of hours it thought it would take me to learn it, and so forth. I remember the Win 11 sys admin knowledge was estimated at 1000 hours. (wow). But treati
America's lack of nuance is pissing me off (Score:3, Interesting)
The inability for America to comprehend nuance is starting to really piss me off.
Yeah we're not all immediately going to lose our jobs.
That's not the problem. The problem is we already are in a scenario where we have two good jobs for every five people. A good job here is something that lets you afford a one-bedroom apartment by yourself in a city that consistently has employment.
Oh here is where a bunch of people dig up lower cost apartments and places with little or no economic activity or job opportunities... Because every time I point out the reality of the economy somebody suddenly digs up a statistic out of context to prove what we all see with our own two fucking eyes isn't real because gas lighting is a thing. Also the president is a pedophile and they voted for him and they would really like to forget about that...
Anyway getting back on track, a small reduction in the number of available jobs that pay people enough to be functioning adults will have a huge impact on our consumer-based economy. Already the only people in the economy who have any disposable income to speak of or the baby boomers who got all the socialism from the New deal and the Great society before pulling the ladder up behind them because Ronald Reagan is so fucking awesome and Orange temu Ronald Reagan is even more awesome.
We have a major crisis coming in addition to all the others like the water shortages and the AI data centers driving up the cost of electricity and everything else and the fact that we've given so much money to the 1% that we can no longer function as a country...
In addition to all of that when the baby boomers die in a few years there isn't going to be enough jobs that pay enough to have disposable income to drive our economy or even our tax base. We're going to have to start cutting police and fire. And it's going to be a lot of desperate jobless young men showing up at your door armed to the teeth because we may not have food and shelter and medicine but by God we've got guns. All of us have guns. Including those desperate young men you abandoned because fuck those guys right? Bootstraps and something.
It doesn't take very many job losses from automation when we have already had 50 years of non-stop automation devouring jobs that nobody likes to talk about. Go Google the phrase 70% of middle class jobs lost to automation since 1980 and you can find the study assuming your Google isn't broken. For some reason every time I point all this out a bunch of people whose Google is broken ask for sources.
And this is why I hate americans. It has to either be every single one of us loses our job immediately tomorrow to a robot we all die in the streets or nobody loses our jobs and we don't have to think about anything on any of the complex interactions between gradual job losses due to automation and the inability to feed a consumer-based economy.
It's like how morons keep asking who is going to buy their products if we none of us have jobs. They don't want to sell us products they want us to go away and die so that they can have everything for themselves. They hate you and they want you to die. It's like none of you people saw the utter disdain and disgust in mitt Romney's face every time he interact it with regular people on the campaign trail back then.
Then again the current president is pretty good at hiding his contempt for you and when he lets it show like when he called the people in the army suckers the news media just moves on and pretends it didn't happen so...
It's frustrating cuz I'm sitting here trapped on this fucking train with all you morons and I can see the other train coming at us and I'm like hey guys maybe we should do something about that and everybody's like it's not going fast enough so it's fine. Then again there's also a bit of I got mine fuck you from all the old farts floating around here who think they're going to die before the shit hits the fan. And you absolutely do not believe in hell because with the shit you've done to your kids yeah if there's a help every one of you fuckers is going there.
And since I'm ranting fuck Reagan democrats too. Your grandpa who voted Democrat voted for Ronald Reagan and for Democrats who are right of Ronald Reagan. He was not a Democrat he was a fucking Dino. And he won't admit it but he voted for Trump at least once probably all three times.
[1]Read the rest of this comment...
[1] https://it.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=24077318&cid=66303360
Re: America's lack of nuance is pissing me off (Score:2)
Pretty much. The rich and powerful figured out how to manipulate the sentiment of a large portion of the US. They convinced Americans that acting in their own best interest is playing into the hands of some boogeyman named Socialism or Washington Elite. Even the people who taught me to think critically as a child were swallowed by the MAGA wave.
The political opponents that should charge to the rescue are tripping over their own feet in an orgy of ineptitude.
I forget this was an AI thread. Sorry.
It's the woke agenda now (Score:1)
It was political correctness when I was a lad, then it was sjw and now it's woke. I think woke is running its course and being replaced by dei. But there is room enough in the right wing's head for both since God knows there's nothing else in there.
What's going to be fun is in 2032 when Trump's going into his fourth term and all these old fucking farts who sold us out so they could freak out about trans girls in sports and drag queens reading books lose $500 a month of social security money and become h
Re: (Score:2)
Live what you preach. Commit suicide when you hit sixty five, because you will suck so bad by then you will pollute everything.
Or you could do the rest of us a favor and off yourself now, you whiny ass.
Same old, same old (Score:2)
Every time something disruptive comes a long, the doomers claim " No one will have a jerb any more!"
But just like every disruptive thing in the past, things just change, not ending up with mass unemployment and people starving in the streets.
We just adjust our skillsets, and move on. I've changed my skillset several times since I first entered the workforce in the 70's. Possible issues? Ya gotta enjoy learning. But that hasn't actually changed.
Now, for people who want to get their first job, and ha
How Elites Captured Capitalism (Score:2)
interesting video with Grace Blakeley
> The Myth of Free Markets: Blakeley argues that neoliberalism did not create free markets; instead, it established an economy dominated by large monopolies and reinforced by state intervention to protect corporate interests (13:52 - 14:30). Moral Hazard: The discussion highlights how governments and central banks frequently bail out large financial institutions and corporations (like Boeing), shielding them from the consequences of their own risky behavior (18:28, 23:28 -
The definition of "job" needs tightening (Score:3)
It seems that in all the news about "jobs" in the US, the definition used is "job == someone does something for money". Which results in completely different reporting than if the definition of "job" used was "working position that dependably earns someone a livable income". I understand that for economists, a world where every human works 3 gig-economy jobs may appear 3 times as good as one where humans need just one job to make enough money for a living, but most people do not fancy a future where all the (previously well paid) jobs are done by some robot.
Re: (Score:3)
"Economist" should be one of the easiest jobs to replace with AI. Ir's not as though they ever do much other than says whatever their employer wants them to say.
Your prejudice against economics is showing (Score:2)
The fact that the bump in the road of the 2008 financial crisis didn't result in a 1930s style depression is because economics has found out how to prevent that outcome. Ignoring that fact is foolish.
Re: (Score:2)
It's because the government threw vast amounts of cheap credit into the economy which turned a short-term crash into a long-term depression where kids can't afford houses and the cost of living is increasing by far more than the fake inflation figures economists churn out.
And it's also why we now have a Potemkin economy where nothing really works and we pretend to get rich by selling houses to each other at ever-increasing prices.
The 1930s depression was also caused by economists who refused to let things c
Re: (Score:1)
> It seems that in all the news about "jobs" in the US, the definition used is "job == someone does something for money". Which results in completely different reporting than if the definition of "job" used was "working position that dependably earns someone a livable income".
Livable income is money. And I suspect you are one who says - "From each, according to their ability, to each according to their needs. I understand that for economists, a world where every human works 3 gig-economy jobs may appear 3 times as good as one where humans need just one job to make enough money for a living, but most people do not fancy a future where all the (previously well paid) jobs are done by some robot.
Did you know in America, we're all starving in the streets, because no one has any mon
Re: (Score:2)
That's some serious verbal diarrhea...
Re: (Score:2)
> That's some serious verbal diarrhea...
You could have disagreed, But you put the pinnacle of your intellect on display for the world to see.
Honeychild, give mommy and daddy their computer back, because 5th grader playground insults are so 5th grade.
Re: (Score:1)
Without doing something for some money, you can't buy the bare necessities to survive.
Working in a position that dependable earns someone a (sometimes, comfortably) livable income, typically refers to someone having a degree and all that.
Gig-economy jobs can work, but once too many people are out of work because of _Progress_, that 'too many people' will be fighting eachother to get those few gig jobs.
My job is now reviewing AI code (Score:3)
My job is now creating good instructions for the AI then reviewing code written by the AI.
The only way I can do work that is because I spent years writing code.
How does someone now in college prepare themselves to do my job by forcing themselves to *write* code, knowing an AI can write it better 9 times out of 10 ?
I hope CS professors are focusing on that.
Re: (Score:2)
> My job is now creating good instructions for the AI then reviewing code written by the AI. The only way I can do work that is because I spent years writing code.
> How does someone now in college prepare themselves to do my job by forcing themselves to *write* code, knowing an AI can write it better 9 times out of 10 ?
My best guess is that as time progresses, and code writing becomes better, that you serve as a transition person. Likely by the time you retire, checking the code will be less of an issue.
Is AI code getting better? (Score:2)
Are you needing to make less and less interventions? If so, you may be redundant soon...
Re: (Score:2)
I honestly think the latest models may be worse than their previous versions.
I do think future models will actually be better, but I don't believe they will never need guidance and review.
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There's no shortcut to experience. "Debugging is twice as hard as writing code" - why do people think this does not apply to reviewing? If you can't write the code, you can't review it effectively. The moment the code doesn't do 100% what you want, you have to debug it anyway. Students have to write shitty code, to understand why it's shitty, and then improve it. They need to hone their skills. There's no shortcut to that, as the premise is you spend time honing them, which includes failing as much as succe
Re: Mental disorder (Score:2)
I found some examples of anxiety-inducing statements that have been handed to the American people in the last couple years:
âoeChicago about to find out why it's called the Department of WAR.â
âoeItâ(TM)s called SEDITIOUS BEHAVIOR AT THE HIGHEST LEVEL. Each one of these traitors to our Country should be ARRESTED AND PUT ON TRIAL. Their words cannot be allowed to stand â" We wonâ(TM)t have a Country anymore!!! An example MUST BE SET.â
"There will be no food, there will be no h
Re: Mental disorder (Score:2)
I just learned a lesson about copying and pasting into the browser on my phone. It's mangled. I can barely read my own post.
Tsunami (Score:2)
I read TFS. "We canâ(TM)t just sit back and wait for the tsunami to hit us" does not match the title of "apocalypse unlikely"
Where do Senior Developers come from? Thin air? (Score:4, Insightful)
I keep reading that AI will be replacing junior positions and that senior positions will still be in demand. Where will the next generation of senior developers come from? How will the develop their skills if AI is removing the junior roles?
Re: (Score:1)
Of course, thin air (also known as: the guy who got the senior title because his dad is golfing buddies with the current senior) is where they come from.
"no sign of economy-wide job destruction" (Score:2)
Except the continued layoffs of tens of thousands of people, the multitudes losing their homes because they haven't been able to find a job, etc. etc.
Nero fiddles while Rome burns.
The end is nigh (Score:2)
Really. Truly. For SURE this time.
Look, depending on who you ask, the sky is falling, the market is going to collapse next week, the icecaps are
melting, the Earth is overheating, sea levels are rising, the Rapture is upon us, some bubble is about to pop, the Singularity
is near, AI will enslave us all and we are living in the end times.
There doesn't seem to be a day that goes by that some doomer isn't out there spouting a story about some apocalypse
level catastrophe that is right around the corner.
( Coinc
Civilization collapse (Score:2)
Collapse generally takes decades or centuries. For the current global interconnected civilization it will likely take longer, as this civilizatoin has been quite stable since the Great Divergence of the 15th or 16th century.
Reliable accounts of people during a civilization collapse are essentially nonexistent, and the retelling likely benefits from hindsight. That said, it seems unlikely that anyone living through it would have been able to confidently identity a collapse that was due to systemic human-caus
Do AIs want to make you stupid? (Score:2)
I think it's funny because the AIs (including AC, of course) are training the humans to be stupid so they will buy profitable garbage that hurts the customers who bought it and vote for corrupt politicians who will harm the voters who voted for them. In reinforcement terms, shallow, trivial, and I dare say stupid questions get "meaningful" answers while deep questions result in negative reinforcement with increasingly ridiculous hallucinations, falsehoods, and I dare say directed lies. (The directors includ