Nathan Gardels at Noema:
Among the job doomsayers of the AI revolution, David Autor is a bit of an outlier. As the MIT economist has written in Noema, the capacity of mid-level professions such as nursing, design or production management to access greater expertise and knowledge once available only to doctors or specialists will boost the “applicable” value of their labor, and thus the wages and salaries that can sustain a middle class.
Unlike rote, low-level clerical work, cognitive labor of this sort is more likely to be augmented by decision-support information afforded by AI than displaced by intelligent machines.
By contrast, “inexpert” tasks, such as those performed by retirement home orderlies, child-care providers, security guards, janitors or food service workers, will be poorly remunerated even as they remain socially valuable. Since these jobs cannot be automated or enhanced by further knowledge, those who labor in them are a “bottleneck” to improved productivity that would lead to higher wages. Since there will be a vast pool of people without skills who can take those jobs, the value of their labor will be driven down even further.
This is problematic from the perspective of economic disparity because four out of every five jobs created in the U.S. are in this service sector.
More here.
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