What a great article! I think it’s so important to have specific historical examples of how technology impacted jobs, vs. speculating in a vacuum. Your emphasis on culture and dynamism is especially on point:
”For coal miners, for example, this would mean job training programs[23] that widen the aperture of cultural pride from providing coal to providing energy, even in the energy forms that will win the future. It also means reusing physical infrastructure when possible, such as the recent Berkshire Hathaway effort to convert a West Virginia coal plant into a nuclear power plant.[”
Focusing on the upside or “widening the aperture” of work people consider will matter a lot, as will just being open to change (vs. using regulation to stop it before we even fully understand it).
This also reminded me of a study that analyzed the impact of AI on taxi drivers. The key finding was that AI helped less experienced/less skilled drivers be more productive—rather than replacing drivers wholesale: ”. We find that AI improves drivers’ productivity by shortening the cruising time, and such gain is accrued only to low-skilled drivers, narrowing the productivity gap between high- and low-skilled drivers by 14%. The result indicates that AI’s impact on human labor is more nuanced and complex than a job displacement story, which was the primary focus of existing studies.”
What a great article! I think it’s so important to have specific historical examples of how technology impacted jobs, vs. speculating in a vacuum. Your emphasis on culture and dynamism is especially on point:
”For coal miners, for example, this would mean job training programs[23] that widen the aperture of cultural pride from providing coal to providing energy, even in the energy forms that will win the future. It also means reusing physical infrastructure when possible, such as the recent Berkshire Hathaway effort to convert a West Virginia coal plant into a nuclear power plant.[”
Focusing on the upside or “widening the aperture” of work people consider will matter a lot, as will just being open to change (vs. using regulation to stop it before we even fully understand it).
This also reminded me of a study that analyzed the impact of AI on taxi drivers. The key finding was that AI helped less experienced/less skilled drivers be more productive—rather than replacing drivers wholesale: ”. We find that AI improves drivers’ productivity by shortening the cruising time, and such gain is accrued only to low-skilled drivers, narrowing the productivity gap between high- and low-skilled drivers by 14%. The result indicates that AI’s impact on human labor is more nuanced and complex than a job displacement story, which was the primary focus of existing studies.”
https://docs.iza.org/dp15677.pdf
Thanks for sharing this article here.