Monday, March 27, 2017

Yes, robots will take your job... and yours too...

"These numbers are large but not implausible. For example, they imply that one more robot in a commuting zone reduces employment by 6.2 workers..."

So says Professor Acemoglu. He doesn't cite Marx, which is an unfortunate oversight, since Marx had a lot to say about technological unemployment. Myself, I'm a robot pessimist/ optimist. Pessimist because I am very confident that AI/robotics will displace workers in a way that lowers equilibrium wages for a large majority, by a lot. Optimist because all of this liberates humans from toil, if only we can see our way to a mode of distribution that decouples consumption from labor. That's called socialism.

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