Insight certainty 4/5 debate potential 3/5

Smith: Automating human tasks does not imply mass labor displacement

Noah Smith · Is AI Really Taking Our Jobs? — With Noah Smith · Jul 2, 2025 · at 18:49

Noah Smith explains why task-based displacement models fail to account for new task creation and economic comparative advantage.

0:00 / 0:11exact quote · 11.4s
▶ Watch the full episode on YouTube → 720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Conceptually the idea of like, well, we made this thing to do all these tasks that humans do is not a, is not by itself a reason to think human labor is going to be masterplaced.”

quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →

More from Noah Smith

Opinion
Smith: Predictions that AI will replace 40-60% of jobs are 'hooey'
“This is complete hooey, and they all come up with really huge percentage, like, 40%, 60% of your jobs are gonna be replaced by AI, so, you know, every, there's a million groups doing this, and they'll come up with different things, and it's hooey for a number …”
Noah Smith Jul 2, 2025 ▶ 13:02 Is AI Really Taking Our Jobs? — With Noah Smith
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Smith: Government-run grocery stores will drain public funds and crush bodegas
“So if you make government run grocery stores, it'll do two things. Number one It will outcompete all the little indie grocery stores and bodegas, thus like a meager source of capital and wealth accumulation for like poor people in poor neighborhoods... And the…”
Noah Smith Jul 2, 2025 ▶ 34:32 Is AI Really Taking Our Jobs? — With Noah Smith
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Smith: AI productivity boom requires reorganizing production processes, not replacing workers
“Eventually we may like people will come along and say, you know what? I could just organize my company entirely different to take more advantage of AI. And I don't just have to replace my humans with AI. I just have the humans do different things and the AI do…”
Noah Smith Jul 2, 2025 ▶ 6:33 Is AI Really Taking Our Jobs? — With Noah Smith
Assertion Supported
Smith: AI-vulnerable occupations continue rising as share of US jobs
“Returning to a measure reintroduced in two, 20, 23, we examine American data on employment by occupation, singling out workers that are believed to be vulnerable to AI. These are white collar employees, including people in back office support, financial operat…”
Noah Smith Jul 2, 2025 ▶ 9:58 Is AI Really Taking Our Jobs? — With Noah Smith
Assertion Contradicted
Smith: IBM fired workers for AI automation and had to rehire
“So we saw this thing where IBM fired all these people because it thought they could replace their jobs with AI and then had to hire them all back, had to hire like a ton of people back. Maybe not the exact same people, not doing the exact same things, but for,…”
Noah Smith Jul 2, 2025 ▶ 15:35 Is AI Really Taking Our Jobs? — With Noah Smith
Assertion Supported
Noah Smith: US Wage Inequality Has Decreased for Over Ten Years
“Right around the time that this thesis started becoming very well accepted and popular, wage inequality started to go down and wages started rising more at the bottom of the distribution than at the middle or top. And so we've seen that for now over 10 years. …”
Noah Smith Jul 2, 2025 ▶ 21:03 Is AI Really Taking Our Jobs? — With Noah Smith
Made with StarZero

Turn any episode into a week of clips.

This entire site, over 300 episodes transcribed, diarized, checked and made playable, runs on the StarZero media pipeline. Drop in your own episode and the podcast clipper finds the moments worth sharing, cuts them, captions them, and reframes them for every feed.