- David Autor warns AI-driven automation may devalue skills, reducing wages and job quality
- AI could concentrate wealth among elites while workers compete for scarce resources
- Jobs like typists, factory technicians, and taxi drivers face replacement by AI
MIT economist David Autor has warned that rapid automation caused by the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) could lead to a Mad Max scenario where jobs may still exist, but the skills that once generated wages would become less valuable, making the paychecks smaller and existence difficult.
"The more likely scenario to me looks much more like Mad Max: Fury Road, where everybody is competing over a few remaining resources that aren't controlled by some warlord somewhere," Mr Autor said on the Possible podcast, hosted by LinkedIn cofounder Reed Hoffman.
The reference by Mr Autor is from the 2015 movie by George Miller, set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where scarcity and inequality prevail while a tyrant rules over the hapless population. Mr Autor believes that AI could concentrate the wealth in the hands of people at the top while the workers fight for morsels.
"The threat that rapid automation poses - to the degree it poses as a threat - is not running out of work, but making the valuable skills that people have highly abundant so they're no longer valuable," he said, adding that roles like typists, factory technicians, and even taxi driver might be replaced.
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AI to take away jobs
Mr Autor is not the only one warning about a dystopian AI future. In May, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned that AI could soon wipe out 50 per cent of entry-level white-collar jobs within the next five years. He added that governments across the world were downplaying the threat when AI's rising use could lead to a significant spike in unemployment numbers.
"We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming. I don't think this is on people's radar," said Mr Amodei.
According to the Anthropic boss, unemployment could increase by 10 per cent to 20 per cent over the next five years, with most of the people 'unaware' about what was coming.
"Most of them are unaware that this is about to happen. It sounds crazy, and people just don't believe it," he said.
"It's a very strange set of dynamics where we're saying: 'You should be worried about where the technology we're building is going.'"
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