Here you can read the teaser first half of a Paul Krugman column posing the key question of whether AI will destroy many American jobs or make us more productive.
For decades, economists have claimed that computers raise the productivity of more skilled workers and take the jobs of less skilled workers. A classic example is the ATM machine reducing the demand for bank tellers or ordering Kiosks at Fast Food restaurants or similar Kiosks at Airport check in desks.
Economists and science fiction buffs are asking; “In the year 2050, what will workers do all day long? What will young people born in 2025 be doing in the modern Labor Market at age 25 in the year 2050?”
I have been a Professor for so long that I remember life before the Internet and email when I would go to the library and use the Dewey Decimal system to find a book and then I would study the books on the same shelf because I anticipated that they would be “correlated” with the book that I did find. This took time and effort!
As a 2nd year PHD student back in 1989, I took the train from Hyde Park to downtown Chicago and went to the musty EPA library. I found an old publication filled with air pollution data. I xeroxed the pages and brought them back to the library computer and I entered the data into a spreadsheet and ran a regression. Do you see the time it took to do this simple stuff? The Internet has made me more productive.
All of this is a preamble. There are roughly 200 million people in the U.S of working age. For each of us, how ready are we to make the most of the AI opportunity? Who is prepared and who isn’t? Going forward, now that we know that AI lurks —- how will parents go about educating their children to prepare them for our “brave new world”?
I recently published my review of the Abundance book and I want to return to my City Journal piece’s main themes.
“Skill” is not uni-dimensional. One cannot define a person by a single number such as their IQ. Consider the skill of a great basketball player; such a player must be able to shoot, pass and play defense and understand the team concept and understand the situation concerning when to solo and when to play within the offensive structure.
While genetics matter, from birth to age 25 —- our overall skill development depends on countless forces including parents, peers, schools and our own investment of our time. If the U.S educational system offered greater opportunity for young people such as urbanites then more of us would be ready to gain from AI. Millions of Americans are not ready for the AI shock because of the urban monopoly of how we provide education for young people. Millions of Americans have been brought up by a single parent. More fathers would be more involved in their children’s lives if the fathers were earning more income. Many urban men have faced challenges finding work in part because of their public education and due to the labor market rules in big cities that reduce the incentives of potential employers from hiring these men. You can read my new 2025 free book for more details about what new rules of the game would allow more of us to gain from AI.
I am greatly interested in how people adapt to challenges. These challenges include; natural disaster shocks, a diagnosis of a chronic disease, being displaced from a factory job perhaps due to U.S competition with foreign exporters such as China, and new technologies such as AI.
When a group of people are not able to adapt, why is this the case? What types of people in terms of personality, age, and skill set are unable and unwilling to pivot as circumstances change? What geographic locations feature a dynamic labor market offering new opportunities as other past industries decline? What laws at the Federal, State and local level promote dynamism so that the economy discovers new paths?
In the Star Wars movies, R2D2 and C3PO help Luke and the gang to achieve their intergalactic goals.
The rise of AI creates an even greater imperative to improve our urban school system.