AI and the future of work

Are doomsday predictions of AI’s impact on workers overblown? There’s still a raging debate about how disruptive automation will be in the workforce and who will be hit hardest.  

Verizon CEO Dan Schulman recently delivered a stark warning that unemployment could climb 20% to 30% within the next two to five years as AI and humanoid robots enter the workplace. A report by Boston Consulting group similarly predicts roughly half US jobs will be reshaped by AI in the next two to three years. 

But others are more cautious. Most economists agree that while big disruptions are coming, the pace and scale is still uncertain. 

This episode, we’ll look at AI’s potential to replace workers and ask what past technological upheavals, from the Industrial Revolution to the internet, can teach us about navigating the transition.  And we’ll also explore how the changes ahead could ripple into politics, culture and society.

Guests:

— Martha Gimbel, executive director and co-founder of the Budget Lab at Yale University

— Ethan Mollick, author of Co-Intelligence and associate professor and co-director of Generative AI Labs at The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania