Worrying that AI will cause lasting unemployment is silly.
Editor, Wall Street Journal
1211 6th Ave.
New York, NY 10036Editor:
Stuart Berr worries that AI will become so productive that there will be too few jobs left to enable people to earn the incomes necessary to purchase all the goods and services that this new technology churns out (Letters, August 29). This worry is unwarranted. If AI really will produce the cornucopia of output that Mr. Berr fears, the prices of all goods and services will be driven down to zero; no one will need to earn incomes to purchase them. Employment as we know it will be unnecessary. AI will have rescued humanity from the grip of scarcity.
If, instead, the increase in economic production enabled by AI will not eliminate scarcity – as, of course, it will not – there will continue to be human desires to be satisfied. These desires will, as they always have in free societies, inspire entrepreneurs to employ workers to produce outputs aimed at meeting these desires.
Jobs in market economies will disappear only when unmet human desires disappear – an impossible outcome that, were it miraculously to occur, would be cause for unprecedented rejoicing rather than handwringing.
Donald J. Boudreaux
Professor of Economics
and
Martha and Nelson Getchell Chair for the Study of Free Market Capitalism at the Mercatus Center
George Mason University
Fairfax, VA 22030
