Is technology more job augmenting or job replacing? This has been a long-standing debate. But recent academic work suggests that technology has been a net destroyer of jobs for decades.
Artificial intelligence and robotics could rapidly accelerate this trend, with significant implications for inflation, the size of government and U.S.-China relations. ...
David Autor, an economist at MIT and winner of the 2005 John Clark Bates Medal, argues that since 1980, the jobs replaced by automation have not been fully offset by new jobs created.
This reflects the pace of technological change and the fact that advancements are now increasingly focused on “professional, technical, and managerial occupations,” Autor notes, rather than lower-skilled work. ...
But aging, like natural evolution in general, is gradual, while computational and technological evolution accelerates at an exponential pace. Because of the convexity in technological advances, it’s hard not to bet on technology rather than workers.
See the full story here: https://www.reuters.com/technology/artificial-intelligence/ai-will-replace-most-humans-then-what-2025-08-19/