Toward understanding the impact of artificial intelligence on labor

Abstract

Rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI) and automation technologies have the potential to significantly disrupt labor markets. While AI and automation can augment the productivity of some workers, they can replace the work done by others and will likely transform almost all occupations at least to some degree. Rising automation is happening in a period of growing economic inequality, raising fears of mass technological unemployment and a renewed call for policy efforts to address the consequences of technological change. In this paper we discuss the barriers that inhibit scientists from measuring the effects of AI and automation on the future of work. These barriers include the lack of high-quality data about the nature of work (e.g., the dynamic requirements of occupations), lack of empirically informed models of key microlevel processes (e.g., skill substitution and human–machine complementarity), and insufficient understanding of how cognitive technologies interact with broader economic dynamics and institutional mechanisms (e.g., urban migration and international trade policy). Overcoming these barriers requires improvements in the longitudinal and spatial resolution of data, as well as refinements to data on workplace skills. These improvements will enable multidisciplinary research to quantitatively monitor and predict the complex evolution of work in tandem with technological progress. Finally, given the fundamental uncertainty in predicting technological change, we recommend developing a decision framework that focuses on resilience to unexpected scenarios in addition to general equilibrium behavior.

The Golden Age of Social Science

“…Interdisciplinarity (Frank et al, 2019) Railroad expansion from 1870 to 1890 in the U.S. increased agricultural land value.…”

Polarization(s) in Labour Markets

“…Autor (2019) shows how technological changes have affected low-educated urban workers by reducing their advantage in working in metropolitan areas because routine occupations have been reduced in these areas. Finally, recent developments in artificial intelligence, and its potential to replace workers to perform some highly-skilled tasks (for example the diagnosis of certain diseases) raise the question of its complementarity or substitutability with high-skilled workers, which could deeply modify the process of polarization (FrAnk et al, 2019). However, the effects of artificial intelligence development on productivity and employment may be slow to spread; both because the accumulation of capital stock based on this technology would take time to have macroeconomic effects, but also because its diffusion would require additional investments (BrynjolFsson et al, 2017).…”

Labour Market In Digital Economy: New Opportunities, Requirements And Threats

“…The labour market in modern economic conditions is undergoing a fairly noticeable transformation (Fregin, Levels, & van der Velden, 2019;Genz, Janser, & Lehmer, 2019). It allows us to say that this is one of the most dynamically changing markets in the digital society (Frank et al, 2019): the requirements for employees on the part of employers are changing, professions are transforming, and the employees' expectations of the labour market are also seeing modification. These changes are not easy: there are all sorts of barriers on the way of digital technologies implementation to the labour market, such as barriers of trust (as noted by experts of the Ministry of Labour (Golyshkova, Lobachyov, & Metyolkin, 2018), one of the most significant reasons for the appearing risks in digitalization and automatization is insufficient psychological readiness of citizens (youth and employees) to change in accordance with transforming conditions), technical barriers (hurdles in the access to technical devices), and many others.…”