{"id":104245,"date":"2026-08-14T04:00:36","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T08:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=104245"},"modified":"2026-08-13T16:49:11","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T20:49:11","slug":"ais-coming-everyone-panic","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/ais-coming-everyone-panic\/","title":{"rendered":"AI’s coming, everyone panic!"},"content":{"rendered":"

At the Foundation for Economic Education, Mani Basharzad<\/a> suggests we do the exact opposite of my chosen headline in regard to the inevitable collapse of civilization<\/span><\/strike> rise of artificial intelligence:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In recent weeks, a letter on AI titled “We Must Act Now<\/a>” has made headlines. Its list of signatories brought together an unlikely coalition of intellectuals, from Joseph Stiglitz and Paul Krugman to Alex Tabarrok, Tyler Cowen, and Niall Ferguson.<\/p>\n

The signatories agree on three key propositions. First, they argue that “AI may become radically more powerful over the next decade”. Second, they argue that it could “transform the economy on a scale larger than the Industrial Revolution, but over a much shorter period, bringing both large-scale job displacement and significant improvements in living standards”. Third, they argue that “economists, policymakers, and technology leaders must act now to create the incentives, guardrails, and institutions needed to ensure AI benefits society”.<\/p>\n

These propositions have created an unusual consensus among economists and policymakers. They also reflect a broader public anxiety about AI and its impact on people’s livelihoods. Yet, as Stanford economist John Cochrane<\/a> remarked in response to the letter, “You see AI everywhere, except in productivity and labor statistics”. That is the first problem with the argument: those are the two places where the letter’s predictions should already be showing up.<\/p>\n

The letter makes extraordinary claims, and as the famous saying goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Yet the evidence offered is remarkably thin. The language is dramatic \u2014 “large-scale job displacement”, “larger than the Industrial Revolution”, and “major gains in living standards” \u2014 but every prediction is qualified by one word: could. There is still little evidence that AI has fundamentally reshaped employment or productivity.<\/p>\n

Take the labor market as an example. A widely cited survey<\/a> claimed that employers plan to reduce graduate hiring because of AI. But the study was forecasting the future, not describing present reality. It found that “four in ten employers believe entry-level roles could disappear within the next five years”. Once again, the evidence rests on expectations and fears rather than observed outcomes.<\/p>\n

Now compare that with what is actually happening. Economist Valentin Boboc<\/a> has argued that entry-level jobs are growing fastest at firms that are aggressively adopting AI. If AI were already eliminating these positions, we would expect to see the opposite.<\/p>\n

Consider youth unemployment. Which developed country currently faces one of the most severe youth employment crises? The answer is not a country overwhelmed by AI, but the United Kingdom. More than 1 million people aged 16\u201324 are classified as NEET (Not in Education, Employment, or Training), at an estimated annual cost of \u00a3125 billion<\/a> ($169 billion) to the economy.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’m somewhat ambivalent about the “Something must be done! This is something! Therefore we must do it!<\/em>” reaction to the rise of widely available LLM agents. If<\/em> all the claims for AI’s disruptive abilities are true, then change is going to happen whether we want it to or not. I’ve had little direct contact with the various agents, having used Grok a couple of times to generate graphics to accompany blog posts, but I’m told by others that they get lots of benefit from using their preferred AI for all sorts of things. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At the Foundation for Economic Education, Mani Basharzad suggests we do the exact opposite of my chosen headline in regard to the inevitable collapse of civilization rise of artificial intelligence: In recent weeks, a letter on AI titled “We Must Act Now” has made headlines. Its list of signatories brought together an unlikely coalition of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[28,53,15],"tags":[1506,456,95,546],"class_list":["post-104245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-technology","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-hysteria","tag-jobs","tag-viewing-with-alarm"],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-r7n","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=104245"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":104248,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104245\/revisions\/104248"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=104245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=104245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=104245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}