JOBS WILL CEASE TO DEFINE US WHEN OUR BETTERS HAVE NONE:

It is "glaringly obvious," says Daron Acemoglu, an economist at MIT, that political leaders are "totally unprepared" to deal with how automation is changing employment. Automation has been displacing workers from a variety of occupations, including ones in manufacturing. And now, he says, AI and the quickening deployment of robots in various industries, including auto manufacturing, metal products, pharmaceuticals, food service, and warehouses, could exacerbate the effects. "We haven't even begun the debate," he warns. "We've just been papering over the issues."

It is often argued that technological progress always leads to massive shifts in employment but that at the end of the day the economy grows as new jobs are created. However, that's a far too facile way of looking at the impact of AI and automation on jobs today. Joel Mokyr, a leading economic historian at Northwestern University, has spent his career studying how people and societies have experienced the radical transitions spurred by advances in technology, such as the Industrial Revolution that began in the late 18th century. The current disruptions are faster and "more intensive," Mokyr says. "It is nothing like what we have seen in the past, and the issue is whether the system can adapt as it did in the past."

Mokyr describes himself as "less pessimistic" than others about whether AI will create plenty of jobs and opportunities to make up for the ones that are lost. And even if it does not, the alternative--technological stagnation--is far worse. But that still leaves a troubling quandary: how to help the workers left behind. "There is no question that in the modern capitalist system your occupation is your identity," he says. And the pain and humiliation felt by those whose jobs have been replaced by automation is "clearly a major issue," he adds. "I don't see an easy way of solving it. It's an inevitable consequence of technological progress."

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