Wer wann von neuen Technologien profitiert
Im Wall Street Journal findet man ein Porträt von David Autor, einem der fachlich und persönlich interessantesten Ökonomen unserer Zeit. Er beschäftigt sich u.a. damit, wer von Technologien profitiert und wer verliert:
Adding up hundreds of numbers is hard for people but trivial for a computer. Figuring whether something left on a desk is trash is easy for people but enormously hard for computers.
They concluded that computers are good at tasks that are cognitive but also routine—the type of work done by bookkeepers and switchboard operators.
As a result, computers were displacing jobs that were once tickets to the middle class for workers without college degrees. Meanwhile, more educated workers were benefiting from the increased productivity computers were giving them. Low-paid service work, like cleaning the homes of those educated workers, wasn’t hurt either: Computers couldn’t put sheets on beds.
People in communities competing with Chinese imports, such as furniture-making towns or at textile-manufacturing centers concentrated in the South, were losing their jobs. Often, they were forced onto food stamps and disability.
The research, first released in 2011, was controversial. But Donald Trump, campaigning for the presidency in 2016, successfully tapped into exactly that frustration. Indeed, later work would show that the more affected an area was by “the China Shock,” the larger the rightward shift among that area’s white voters.
Although computers hurt many middle-class jobs, Autor thinks AI could do the opposite. People with less education will be able to do more work that can now be performed only by highly trained elite workers, such as computer coding.