AI could widen the wealth gap and wipe out entry-level jobs, expert says
August 5, 20254:08 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition
By
Steve Inskeep
,
Nia Dumas
A photo taken on January 2, 2025 shows the letters AI for Artificial Intelligence on a laptop screen (R) next to the logo of the Chat AI application on a smartphone screen in Frankfurt am Main, western Germany. (Photo by Kirill KUDRYAVTSEV / AFP) (Photo by KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images)
KIRILL KUDRYAVTSEV/AFP via Getty Images/AFP
Artificial Intelligence continues to grow, forcing companies to find a way to close the gap between innovation and preparation.
Companies have begun integrating AI into their day-to-day operations. Some employers are concerned that this will lead to a complete elimination of their roles within companies.
In a previous Morning Edition video interview, former Secretary of Transportation Pete Buttigieg raised concerns that America is not prepared for the economic downsides of artificial intelligence.
"The economic implications are the ones that I think could be the most disruptive, the most quickly. We're talking about whole categories of jobs, where — not in 30 or 40 years, but in three or four — half of the entry-level jobs might not be there. It will be a bit like what I lived through as a kid in the industrial Midwest when trade in automation sucked away a lot of the auto jobs in the nineties — but ten times, maybe a hundred times more disruptive," Buttigieg said.
Erik Brynjolfsson, senior fellow at Stanford's Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence and director of the Stanford Digital Economy Lab, told Morning Edition that coding, software engineering and call centers are the jobs that are likely to experience the most change.
Most industries are leaning toward the direction of automation, Brynjolfsson explains.
But there are things that artificial intelligence can't do. Therefore, future jobs may rely on more human skills like communication and creativity — areas where AI can assist but not replace.
"I do think that interacting with humans face-to-face is something that a lot of people prefer — that's something that by definition can only be done by other humans," Brynjolfsson said.
He also warns that while AI can generate wealth, he worries that it will only deepen the divide between those who form technology and those it will displace.
Brynjolfsson spoke to NPR's Steve Inskeep about the urgent areas that need to be addressed when integrating new technologies into the workforce such as job displacement, the need for more human-centered skills and widening the gap of economic inequality.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity
Interview highlights
Steve Inskeep: First, is Pete Buttigieg right to raise this concern about the very near future?
Erik Brynjolfsson: Yeah, he's spot on. We are seeing enormous advances in core technology and very little attention is being paid to how we can adapt our economy and be ready for those changes.
Inskeep: What are the jobs that are going away partly or entirely?
Brynjolfsson: There's transition in both directions. There are jobs that are disappearing, and there are new jobs being created. Some of the jobs that are changing the most are in coding, software engineering and in call centers — which I've studied. And in those areas, we're already beginning to see some effects, especially on entry level jobs.
Inskeep: I'm also thinking of an auto factory that I visited earlier this year in China. They had some human employees, but robots were doing an awful lot of the work, and I would imagine robots might do more and more of it.
Brynjolfsson: I visited one of those factories over in Shenzhen and I saw the same thing. They're all going to trend in the direction of more automation — that's just more cost-effective. And the people at the factories were telling me it leads to better quality and more consistency as well.
Inskeep: Well, that can be. But of course, there's also the dislocation. So let's focus on that for a second. Pete Buttigieg made that comparison to the industrial Midwest where there were entire communities that were devastated. Could we see that kind of effect?
Brynjolfsson: I think it's a very apt analogy. The ideal thing is that you find ways of compensating people and managing a transition. Sad to say, with trade, we didn't do a very good job of that. A lot of people got left behind. It would be a catastrophe if we made the similar mistake with technology, [which] that also is going to create enormous amounts of wealth, but it's not going to affect everyone evenly. And we have to make sure that people manage that transition.
Inskeep: How would we shape our future in a more positive way?
Brynjolfsson: The first thing a lot of economists, including me, would go to is worker retraining and understanding what are the kinds of skills and tasks that are going to become more important going forward: a lot of interpersonal skills, a lot of management skills. I think as we create these agents, we're all going to become CEOs of our own little fleet of agents. Learning those management skills that apply not just to humans, but increasingly to agents, is something that can be taught. If we each have our own fleet of agents, then we can each be more productive.
Inskeep: You better explain what an agent is for people who aren't familiar.
Brynjolfsson: AI — we are all using LLMs (Large Language Models) increasingly and using them to give us bits of text back to us and give us some advice. Agents is taking that one step further where the large language model doesn't simply give us some text back, but actually takes an action. It goes ahead and makes an airline reservation or buys something for us or carries out some other tasks.
Inskeep: I want to add a note of skepticism about retraining. I understand broadly why it would be a good idea. But I think about the industrial Midwest in the way that people talk about job retraining as old industrial jobs went away. Some of the effects of that included job retraining programs — which sound good but didn't really help people very much — an emphasis on education — which sounds great — but maybe it just increased the price and the demand for education and not everybody ended up with a very fruitful job on the other end. This is hard.
Brynjolfsson: It's hard. There's still a wage premium for people who are more educated versus less educated. And it doesn't necessarily mean retraining to do more of the same. It's often moving in to do new industries — new kinds of tasks. I do think that interacting with humans face to face is something that a lot of people prefer. That's something that by definition can only be done by other humans.
Inskeep: I'm wondering if we have the wrong emphasis on education. We've been trying so hard to bring up STEM fields. Some of those jobs can be replaced. Maybe we should have been emphasizing more of the liberal arts which deal with humanity.
Brynjolfsson: I think it's a "both/and." I absolutely do think there could be a revenge of a lot of humanity's tasks, and there may be opportunities there for more creative, artistic, interpersonal work. At the same time, there are huge premiums for certain kinds of engineering, math, science and coding. You may have seen some of the outsized salaries they're being offered to people who are really good at creating AI.
Inskeep: Yeah, absolutely true. Do you worry that the creative jobs could go away, too? I think about the movie industry, where there's already been a lot of tension and conflict about the idea that maybe you don't even need the actor to be there — the AI can make it up.
Brynjolfsson: It's amazing what's happening in that industry. That's a place where the jobs are going to change a lot. I do think there will be opportunities. For people like you and me to make our own fun little movies I've been using Chat GPT to write poems to my wife and songs that I couldn't have done previously. Maybe next year I'll be making movies.
Inskeep: Somebody's going to be listening and saying, "Wait a minute. You asked ChatGPT to write a poem to your wife?"
Brynjolfsson: Full disclosure, I did tell her where it came from, but somehow she still appreciated it.
Inskeep:: You seem basically optimistic. Is there something that keeps you up at night?
Brynjolfsson: Oh, definitely. I'm optimistic about the potential to create a lot more wealth and productivity. I think we're going to have much higher productivity growth. At the same time, there's no guarantee all that wealth and productivity is going to be evenly shared. We are investing so much in driving the capabilities for hundreds of billions of dollars and we're investing very little in thinking about how we make sure that leads to widely shared prosperity. That should be the agenda for the next few years.
This story was edited by Suzanne Nuyen.
