“The hollowing out of manufacturing and office work over the past 40 years has undoubtedly put downward pressure on the wages of people in these types of jobs, not least because they are now working for lower wages. No. That’s because they don’t do it,” Auter said.
Frey says politicians need to offer solutions to people in crisis to prevent economic and social instability. That is likely to include providing social safety net programs to those affected. Frey has written extensively about the effects of the first industrial revolution, and he says there are lessons to be learned from it. For example, Britain had a program called the Poor Law, which provided financial relief to people harmed by automation.
“What we saw back then was a lot of social unrest. Wages were stagnant or declining for large parts of the population. There were riots,” Frey says. “If you look at areas where the Poor Laws were more generous, there was less social unrest and unrest. Using the welfare system to compensate people who suffered losses is something we’ve been doing for a long time. We should continue to do so.”
While many people would benefit from retraining for other jobs, Autor said the United States has never been good at retraining people, and creating effective retraining programs is difficult. He says it will take some effort. Technology can actually help, he says, because people can be retrained using useful new digital tools.
When ChatGPT and similar AI tools came out, there was a lot of hype around them. The hype has since died down a bit, with some suggesting that perhaps these tools aren’t as useful as promised. Maybe they won’t take away everyone’s jobs. However, with the rate at which AI is advancing, we don’t know what will happen in 5 to 10 years, or even next year.
Vincent Konitzer, a computer science professor at Carnegie Mellon University, says the potential of these AI tools soon should not be underestimated. While its use may be somewhat restricted now, that could change relatively quickly and become as destructive as some have warned.
“I’m worried that this will become a ‘boiled frog’ scenario. There are amazing advances being made in AI, but it’s not going to take people’s jobs anytime soon. [people] We conclude that there is nothing to worry about, and we accept new technology as the new normal, but it’s not all that impressive after all,” says Konitzer. “Meanwhile, the world and the job market are gradually but rapidly adapting to new technologies in complex ways, and at some point we find that major societal problems are emerging.”