There is an interesting article in today’s NYT about what history tells us regarding the impact of dramatic technological change on workers. Sometimes the transition to a different kind of economy is smooth, and sometimes it isn’t. Key factors include the state of the economy at the time the change occurs, the speed at which the change occurs, and the amount and quality of government intervention to mitigate the damage to newly redundant workers.
That is a reasonable analysis. But it doesn’t answer the question that Bill Gates and I, among others, have asked about AI: the original Industrial Revolution replaced human strength and dexterity with machines, so if AI substitutes software for human intellect, what does the average person have left to sell?
I have yet to see a plausible answer to that question.