Is AI a job-killer or an up-skiller?

The Indicator from Planet Money

NPR

Business

4.7 • 9.2K Ratings

🗓️ 23 May 2023

⏱️ 9 minutes

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Summary

For all the talk about AI, one of the burning questions is how the technology will affect the workforce. Today, we talk to the authors of one of the first empirical studies that looks at AI in the workplace.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	NPR.
0:07.0	Lately, we've been thinking a lot about the Luddites.
0:15.5	Maybe you've heard of them back in the early 1800s in England.
0:19.1	The Luddites were this group of skilled textile makers, masters of their craft who spent
0:24.7	years training and made textiles the old school way.
0:28.6	But at the turn of the 19th century, the group of artisans had a problem.
0:33.0	Big textile manufacturers were increasingly using machines and hiring lower skilled workers
0:37.7	to run them.
0:39.0	The Luddites protested.
0:40.6	They set fire to factory machines because they feared this trend would put them out of
0:45.3	work.
0:46.3	And of course, they were right.
0:47.8	And we've been thinking about this lately because there seems to be a similar anxiety swirling
0:52.5	around artificial intelligence.
0:55.5	Now, leaving aside predictions about how AI may one day take over and kill off the
1:00.1	entire human race, AI today is already showing its potential to kill off human jobs.
1:06.4	AI is writing news articles and computer code.
1:09.5	It's generating artwork and medical diagnoses.
1:12.9	And yet, for all the worry about how AI will reshape the work landscape, there's new
1:19.0	research to suggest that there might also be a positive story to tell here.
1:23.5	This is the indicator for money.
1:24.5	I'm Adrian Ma.
	...

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