AI and Jobs: What Do We Really Know?

The New Bazaar

Will artificial intelligence help you do your job, or will it just straight-up do your job and leave you unemployable?

Or will the future bring something else entirely — either between those two extremes or a world that we simply cannot imagine yet? And are we already starting to see signs of that future emerging?

On this episode of The New Bazaar, Cardiff is joined by economist Nathan Goldschlag, Research Director at the Economic Innovation Group. Until recently, Nathan was Principal Economist at the U.S. Census Bureau’s Center for Economic Studies, where among other things he led research on the impact of technology, including AI, on the economy. Any worthwhile list of the world’s best economists on the subject of AI and work would have to include him.

Cardiff and Nathan go through Nathan’s own research* and also filter out the megaton of nonsense on the topic and discuss some of the work done by others — research, essays, meanderings — that they think is actually worth sharing with listeners.

They discuss, among other things:

• How many businesses are now using AI to produce goods and services
• How have things changed since the launch and popularization of large language models
• Economic growth consequences of AI
• Whether “learn to code” is still good advice
• The skills that still matter
• To steer or not to steer the AI future

* Nathan’s research on AI was done in collaboration with a large team of researchers at the Center for Economic Studies at the U.S. Census Bureau including Emin Dinlersoz, Lucia Foster, David Beede, John Haltiwanger, Zach Kroff, Nikolas Zolas, Gary Anderson, and Eric Childress, along with program area partners including Kathryn Bonney, Cory Breaux, Cathy Buffington, and Keith Savage, as well as academic partners including Daron Acemoglu, Erik Brynjolfsson, Kristina McElheran, and Pascual Restrepo.

Related links:

• The impact of AI on the workforce: Tasks versus jobs?
• Tracking Firm Use of AI in Real Time: A Snapshot from the Business Trends and Outlook Survey.
• The Rapid Adoption of Generative AI | NBER
• Answering the Call of Automation
• AI-2027.com
• Tyler Cowen - the #1 bottleneck to AI progress is humans
• Driverless trucks are coming and unions aren’t happy about it
• Generative AI at Work

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