Here’s a letter to the Wall Street Journal.
Editor:
Barton Swaim wisely cautions against swallowing any of the many predictions that AI will cause massive unemployment (“Is AI the Next Climate Change?” February 5). Such predictions have been commonplace at least since British hand-weavers – led by the fictional Ned Ludd more than 200 years ago – warned that the labor-saving power loom spelled doom for ordinary workers.
The value of economic activity is in its ability to satisfy human wants. As long as humans have wants that AI, machines, and other nonhuman processes cannot fully satisfy, there will be a demand, in market economies, for human labor to help to satisfy those wants. AI will cause massive “unemployment” only when it satisfies human wants so massively that most of us will experience heaven on earth. That day, unfortunately, will never come.
Sincerely,
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
