Hexapodia XLIX: We Cannot Tell in Advance Which Technologies Are Labor-Augmenting & Which Are Labor-Replacing

Key Insights:* Brad’s microphone is dying, and a new one is on order.* However, 75% of the talking on this episode is Noah: he came loaded for bear.* Although Noah has not yet read Acemoglu & Johnson’s Power & Progress, he nevertheless has OPINIONS!* Friedrich von Hayek was right when he pointed out that we could not know the shape of future technologies* Particularly, we cannot know where, as new technologies develop, they will settle in the balance between tacit-local and formal-generalizable-centralizable knowledge with respect to what is needed to make them actually work.* Thus the ex ante error rate in figuring out in advance whether a branch of knowledge is labor-augmenting or labor-replacing is high.* Better not to try to channel R&D in labor-augmenting directions: we have powerful, well-known, useful, and reliable tools for improving equity: use them rather than trying to guide future technologies in a labor-augmenting equality-promoting direction.* Noah will read Power & Progress before mid-August.* Brad will try to come up with examples of technologies other than the power loom that we wish had been adopted more slowly.* Hexapodia!References:* Daron Acemoglu & Simon Johnson: Power & Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology & Prosperity <https://www.amazon.com//dp/B0BD4DV59F>* Daron Acemoglu & Pascual Restrepo: “The Race Between Machine & Man: Implications of Technology for Growth, Factor Shares & Employment” <https://www.nber.org/papers/w22252>* Daisuke Adachi, Daiji Kawaguchi, & Yukiko Saito: Robots and Employment: Evidence from Japan, 1978-2017 <https://econpapers.repec.org/paper/etidpaper/20051.htm>* Jay Dixon, Bryan Hong, & Lynn Wu: The Robot Revolution: Managerial and Employment Consequences for Firms * Karen Eggleston, Yong Suk Lee, & Toshiaki Iizuka: Robots and Labor in the Service Sector: Evidence from Nursing Homes* Katja Mann & Lukas Püttmann: Benign Effects of Automation: New Evidence from Patent Texts <https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2959584>* Lawrence Mishel and Josh Bivens: The zombie robot argument lurches on: There is no evidence that automation leads to joblessness or inequality<https://www.epi.org/publication/the-zombie-robot-argument-lurches-on-there-is-no-evidence-that-automation-leads-to-joblessness-or-inequality/> * Arjun Ramani & Zhengdong Wang: “Why transformative artificial intelligence is really, really hard to achieve” <https://thegradient.pub/why-transformative-artificial-intelligence-is-really-really-hard-to-achieve/>* Noah Smith: American workers need lots and lots of robots: With the power of automation, our workers can win. Without it, they're in trouble* Melline Somers, Angelos Theodorakopoulos, & Kerstin Hötte: The fear of technology-driven unemployment and its empirical base <https://cepr.org/voxeu/columns/fear-technology-driven-unemployment-and-its-empirical-base>* Melline Somers, Angelos Theodorakopoulos, & Kerstin Hötte: Technology and jobs: A systematic literature review <https://www.oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/publications/technology-and-jobs-a-systematic-literature-review/> +, of course:* Vernor Vinge: A Fire Upon the Deep <https://archive.org/details/fireupondeep00ving_0/mode/1up> Get full access to Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality at braddelong.substack.com/subscribe