ChatGPT and Automation Come to Knowledge Work | City Journal
It is true that there is something different this time, as there is every time. The specifics of the newest machines are different. But what s not different is the overall effect of automation. Not to diminish the social and political challenges that all disruptions bring to markets and people, but automation has always boosted productivity and thus overall wealth and employment. If labor-saving technologies namely, automation were a net job destroyer, unemployment should have been continually rising over the course of modern history as (physical) automation inexorably expanded. It didn t. MIT economist David Autor has been particularly eloquent on the apparent paradox of seeing continued rise in employment despite advances in labor-reducing technologies, observing that the fundamental threat [to employment growth] is not technology per se but misgovernance.
Of course, where and how most people are employed has changed over time. It s going to change again. And that is disruptive. But the central and unprecedented difference between our time and previous eras is the demographic reality of a shrinking workforce. In the near future, we will need lots of new tools to amplify the efforts of the declining labor supply. Even in our own present, despite the best efforts of the Federal Reserve to increase unemployment (that is, to reduce the pressure employers face to offer inflationary salaries to keep workers), job openings still outnumber people available to fill them. Demographics dictate that this gap will widen. Since most jobs in a modern economy are found in so-called knowledge work, the only way to close the labor gap will be with AI tools useful enough to amplify the efficacy of people in those areas.