this post was submitted on 15 Jan 2024
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Futurology
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Lots of people see the potential for AI & robotics to replace human work, but you rarely see mainstream economists deviate from the party line. The normal response is - nothing to worry about, new jobs have always been created by automation. Many people see the flaw in this answer. What about when AI & robots can do the new jobs too, but for pennies on the dollar compared to humans? How will human-employee businesses compete?
The IMF is a major pillar of the mainstream global economic establishment. For them to come out and say this out loud is significant. It means the topic is given a credibility and urgency it hadn't had before in national governments, the world's central banks, etc, etc
I'm not super familiar with the inner workings of the IMF, but it does state in the notes section state that these "discussion notes" don't reflect the opinions of the IMF, just the authors.
In addition, reports like this are always tricky. It seems to base their predictions on where people think the technology could go, rather than where it is today. For example they have professionals as the highest to be potentially impacted. This shows they are speaking about generative AI (as previous AI/ML didn't generally touch these fields). While generative AI has been impressive, I'm not sure anyome has been able to demonstrate an substantive impact to professionals.
A counterpoint though would be something like customer service. Automation in that space over the past couple of decades has reduced the cost/number of workers, but at the cost of efficiency/efficacy. So it's possible we may see things like AI doctors and lawyers, but potentially at a reduced quality for the average person.
Just my thoughts regarding the angle this paper/discussion notes went in.