Technological shocks are often seen as causing risky situations in the labour market.
This question is old, it was well described by Alfred Sauvy in “The Machine and Unemployment” (1980).
The arrival of new technologies caused great anxiety among workers about their jobs. This usually resulted in a period of social instability before the creation of new jobs compensated for those that had been lost while ensuring higher incomes.

This reassuring side of past history is not, however, completely reassuring in recent decades. The introduction of microcomputers has relocated and improved working conditions for those who used them.
This has been a strong source of inequality in the labour market between those benefiting from the productivity gains resulting from their use and the others. The inequality was on income and the interest in employment while job creation remained significant.

The emergence of Artificial Intelligence puts the issue of the impact of technology on employment back at the top of the pile for economists. Will AI generate additional inequalities? And will it be a source of employment disruption?
The answer is, as always, more complex than one would like. Especially since the experience with AI is only just beginning.
There are four types of thoughts for now

• AI has not caused a reversal in the dynamics of the labor market. The employment profile remains very consistent with that of the business cycle.
• Some predictions about specific jobs have been contradicted. Some jobs, such as radiologists, were expected to shrink rapidly due to AI. This does not appear to be the case.
• AI rehabilitates the middle class in the labor market and reduces inequalities with more qualified people. This is somewhat the opposite of what was observed with the introduction of the microcomputer. AI is thus a generator of productivity for the least qualified people, ultimately allowing an increase in income.
• However, if we put a group of entrepreneurs or a group of researchers in competition with each other, we see that AI can be a source of inequalities in relation to the relevance of the requests and the way of posing the problems. In this case, the intelligence of individuals is complementary to the use of AI. The result is more unequal.

These few elements reflect results on experiments that will have to be repeated to make them more relevant. But it would seem that AI has a different impact than what was generally observed in the past. This makes it a fascinating field of study that probably has not finished surprising us.

Source CapRadio Gregory Rosalsky Lien https://bit.ly/40mbmUp