CHANGE: AI is going to eliminate way more jobs than anyone realizes.

Past automation technologies had the most effect on low-skilled workers. But with generative AI, the more educated and highly skilled workers who previously were immune to automation are vulnerable. According to the International Labor Organization, there are between 644 and 997 million knowledge workers globally, between 20% and 30% of total global employment. In the US, the knowledge-worker class is estimated to be nearly 100 million workers, one out of three Americans. A broad spectrum of occupations — marketing and sales, software engineering, research and development, accounting, financial advising, and writing, to name a few — is at risk of being automated away or evolving.

This doesn’t mean, however, that there will be a flood of unemployed workers begging for any job. AI will lead to net job creation over the long run, and some roles that seem like they will be affected may actually grow in demand. For instance, ATMs increased the number of bank tellers.

“I do not think we’ll see mass unemployment,” Brynjolfsson, who anticipates AI spreading faster than other general-purpose technologies, told me. “But I do think we’ll see mass disruption, where a lot of wages for some jobs will fall, wages for other jobs will rise, and we’ll be shifting around into demand for different kinds of skills. They’ll have to be a lot of reallocation of labor and rescaling of labor with winners and losers.”

Plus:

The small and large compounding effects of productivity growth across many industries are central to the growth trajectory and the long-run effects of AI. Goldman Sachs estimated that over 10 years, generative AI alone could raise annual US labor-productivity growth by just under 1.5 percentage points, “roughly the same-sized boost that followed the emergence of prior transformative technologies like the electric motor and personal computer.”

That will be great for the world, but maybe less great for this country. AI requires a lot of electricity — which Biden’s so-called Inflation Reduction Act will likely reduce.