DOMINOES FALL WITH ADVANCES
strengthening and broadening recovery in the euro area,” Draghi said. His comments pushed the euro to almost its highest level in a year, though it later gave up some of the gains.
But along with the optimism is a fear that the economic expansion might bypass large swaths of the population, in part because a growing number of jobs could be replaced by computers capable of learning — artificial intelligence.
Policymakers and economists conceded that they have not paid enough attention to how much technology has hurt the earning power of some segments of society, or planned to address the concerns of those who have lost out. That has, in part, nourished the political populism that contributed to Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, and the election of President Donald Trump.
“Generally speaking, economic growth is a good thing,” Ben Bernanke, former chairman of the Federal Reserve, said at the forum. “But, as recent political developments have brought home, growth is not always enough.”
In the past, technical advances caused temporary disruptions but ultimately improved living standards, creating new categories of employment along the way. Farm machinery displaced farmworkers but eventually they found better paying jobs, and today their great-grandchildren may design video games.
But artificial intelligence threatens broad categories of jobs previously seen as safe from automation, such as legal assistants, corporate auditors and investment managers. Large groups of people could become obsolete, suffering the same fate as plow horses after the invention of the tractor.
“More and more, we are seeing economists saying, ‘This time could be different,’” said Autor, who presented a paper on the subject.
Central bankers have begun examining the effect of technology on employment because it might help solve several economic quandaries.
Why is workers’ share of total earnings declining, even though unemployment is at record lows and corporate profits at record highs? Why is productivity — the amount that a given worker produces — stuck in neutral?
“The mere fact that we are organizing this conference here in Sintra testifies to our interest in that discussion,” Benoît Coeuré, a member of the European Central Bank’s executive board, said in an interview, referring to the “Robocalpyse” debate.
Of particular interest to the European Central Bank is why faster economic growth has not caused wages and prices to rise.
One explanation is that more work is being done by advanced computers, with the rewards flowing to the narrow elite that owns them. Still, among the economists in Sintra there was plenty of skepticism about whether the Robocalpyse is nigh.
Robocalpyse advocates underestimate the power of scientific advances to beget more scientific advances, said Joel Mokyr, a professor at Northwestern University who studies the history of economics.
“Think about what computers are doing to our ability to discover science,” Mokyr said during a panel discussion, citing computers that can solve equations that have baffled mathematicians for decades..
Hal Varian, the chief economist at Google — whose self-driving technology may someday make taxi drivers unnecessary — said that the plunging cost of information technology “has virtually eliminated the fixed cost of entering a business.” Companies can rent software and computing power over the internet.
Yet already, disruptions caused by technology help account for rampant pessimism among working-class and middle-class people across the developed world.
Bernanke referred to polls showing that about twice as many Americans say the United States is on the wrong track than say the country is moving in the right direction.
As a result, “last November Americans elected as president a candidate with a dystopian view of the economy,” Bernanke said.
Autor concluded that it was too early to say that robots are coming for people’s jobs. But it could still happen in the future.
“I say not Robocalpyse now,” Autor said, “perhaps Robocalpyse later.”