The tech company promises higher total employment as it reinvests resources toward roles like software development
By Belle Lin of The WSJ.
It might seem strange that AI or any new technology can increase employment. But it does happen. Right after excerpts from this WSJ article I repost a blog entry from 2016 called Automation Can Actually Create More Jobs. Then after that are links to other posts on jobs, robots, automation and AI.
First excerpts from Belle Lin's article:
"International Business Machines Chief Executive Arvind Krishna said the
tech giant has used artificial intelligence, and specifically AI agents,
to replace the work of a couple hundred human resources workers. As a
result, it has hired more programmers and salespeople, he said."
"While there haven’t yet been widespread layoffs or downsizing as a
result of AI across the economy, some business leaders have said they
are holding down head count as they investigate the use of the technology."
"the information-technology workforce has continued to shrink as AI weighs on hiring and some workers leave the field."
"our total employment has actually gone up, because what it does is it
gives you more investment to put into other areas,” Krishna told The
Wall Street Journal."
Now that blog post from 2016 Automation Can Actually Create More Jobs:
Automation Can Actually Create More Jobs
Evidence shows increased productivity leads to more wealth, cheaper goods, greater spending power and ultimately, more jobs
By Christopher Mims of the WSJ.
There are four types of unemployment: seasonal, structural, frictional and cyclical.
Structural unemployment is unemployment caused by a mismatch between the
skills of job seekers and the requirements of available jobs.
One example of this is when you are replaced by a machine, like bank
tellers who were replaced by ATMs. Another example is when there is a
fall in demand for your product, so you get laid off, like with
typewriters since people now use computers. A third example is
geographical, when the jobs are not in your region of the country.
But automation may not be a problem, even in the case of ATMs. Excerpts from the article:
"Since the 1970s, when automated teller machines arrived, the number of
bank tellers in America has more than doubled. James Bessen, an
economist who teaches at Boston University School of Law, points to that
seeming paradox
amid new concerns that automation is “stealing” human jobs. To the
contrary, he says, jobs and automation often grow hand in hand."
"Sometimes, of course, machines really do replace humans, as in agriculture and manufacturing"
"a long trail of empirical evidence shows that the increased
productivity brought about by automation and invention ultimately leads
to more wealth, cheaper goods, increased consumer spending power and
ultimately, more jobs.
In the case of bank tellers, the spread of
ATMs meant bank branches could be smaller, and therefore, cheaper.
Banks opened more branches, and in total employed more tellers, Mr.
Bessen says.
Some individuals are uprooted and suffer. In 1900,
40% of U.S. workers toiled in agriculture; today, that figure is less
than 2%. Manufacturing employment in industrialized countries has
declined in recent decades, as fewer people make more goods. But
society, on the whole, has come out ahead.
It’s true that technology alters the quality, as well as the quantity, of jobs"
[a study] "found big increases in both low-paying and high-paying jobs. There are more
barbers and barkeepers. But there also are more accountants and nurses,
reflecting the rising complexity of the modern economy.
Paradoxically,
says Mr. Stewart, many of the fields most transformed by technology
have produced the biggest increases in employment, from medicine to
management consulting. “What we saw was that machines and people were
highly complementary,” he says.
Such bifurcated labor markets
have ill effects. Disappearing factory jobs have largely been replaced
by jobs in the service sector, where highly skilled workers, like
doctors and computer programmers, are paid more, while many others see
to the comfort and health of the affluent. In the middle, wages have
stagnated, helping spawn our current age of populism.
“The era of mass manufacturing employment in the 1960s and 1970s was a
good thing,” says Dr. Autor. “It created a lot of good jobs, it needed a
lot of hands and eyes, and required some skills but not an enormous
skill set. The work was relatively high value added.” But, he adds, that
era is for the most part behind us."
"For all the recent advances in artificial intelligence, such techniques
are largely applied to narrow areas, such as recognizing images and
processing speech. Humans can do all these things and more, which allows
us to transition to new kinds of work."
"the problem is not “mass unemployment, it’s transitioning people from one job to another.”"
"Near the end of the 19th century, America’s agricultural states faced the prospect of mass unemployment as farms automated.
In
response, they created the “high school movement,” which required
everyone to stay in school until age 16. It was hugely expensive, both
because of the new schools and teachers, but also because these young
people could no longer work on the farm. But it better prepared workers
for 20th century factory jobs"
Related posts:
Technological Disruption in the Labor Market (2025)
Why AI Might Not Take All Our Jobs—if We Act Quickly (2025)
Some good news on productivity (2025) (AI is mentioned)
Some economics of A.I. (2025)
The AI-Generated Population Is Here, and They’re Ready to Work (2024)
Two recent articles on robots and human workers (2024)
Self-service kiosks at McDonald’s are not reducing employment (2024)
Robots writing science fiction (2024)
Amazon’s New Robotic Warehouse Will Rely Heavily on Human Workers (2024)
Will technology cost artists their job? (2023)
Robots Have Been About to Take All the Jobs for 100 Years (2023)
“Why did the human stare at the glass of orange juice?” “They were trying to concentrate.” (2023) (Partly about AI being used to tell jokes)
The $900,000 AI Job Is Here (2023)
Prompt
engineers chat with generative-AI chatbots (creative destruction and
how the economy just keeps creating new types of occupations &
professions) (2023)
Are robots writing fake product reviews? (2022)
Answering the Call of Automation: How the Labor Market Adjusted to the Mechanization of Telephone Operation (2022)
Meet the Army of Robots Coming to Fill In for Scarce Workers (2022)
Warehouses Look to Robots to Fill Labor Gaps, Speed Deliveries (2021)
What if companies can't afford real models for their ads? Use AI generated fake pictures (2020)
An AI Breaks the Writing Barrier (2020)
What
Econ 101 Can Teach Us About Artificial Intelligence: Here's why
advancing technology often leads to more jobs for humans, not fewer (2017)
Can the Robot Revolution Create Enough Jobs? (2017)
Are Robots Going to Steal Our Jobs? Many technologists think so, but economists aren't so easily convinced (2017)
