Europe fancies itself a regulatory superpower and makes a sport of hamstringing technological innovation, so a report released Wednesday by the European Central Bank is especially striking.
Two labor economists conclude that businesses embracing artificial intelligence are more likely to hire new staff than those who aren’t. Specifically, based on a study of 5,000 firms in the eurozone, companies that make significant use of AI are about 4 percent more likely to take on additional staff.
“In other words, AI-intensive firms tend, on average, to hire rather than fire,” the authors conclude.
This further undercuts the narrative, fashionable among doomers, that AI will take everyone’s job. The nature of work will evolve but mostly for the better, as technological progress allows for less scut work.
The ECB report differentiates between companies that use AI and companies that invest in AI, but in both cases the early signs point to a bigger hiring spree when AI is being utilized.
While there’s no guaranteed predictor for what will happen to the labor market in the future, especially with technology advancing so rapidly, the report found “no marked difference” in hiring plans. Instead, the study found that people investing in AI “have positive expectations for future employment growth.”
There aren’t phone or elevator operators anymore, but more people have jobs than ever before, and fewer people are doing manual labor. It used to be popular to warn that ATMs would mean the end of bank tellers. Rarely do these kinds of doomsday predictions come true.
Yet most Americans still express uncharacteristic pessimism about AI. Last month, 63 percent told YouGov they “think AI will lead to a decrease in the number of jobs available,” while just 7 percent predicted AI will increase jobs. This is notably more skeptical than respondents in China, where around 40 percent worry about AI replacing jobs.
Because the United States has the world’s biggest economy, perhaps people feel like they have the most to lose when the world changes. But America’s success in the past has always come from embracing and shaping the future, rather than recoiling from it.
The ECB report is a refreshing reminder that there are life-changing opportunities, not just risks, from the AI revolution.
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