The good scenario is one where AI makes elite expertise cheaper and more accessible. Right now, if you want to do a lot of medical procedures, you need a medical degree. But with the right tools, you could devolve some of those tasks to people who have know something about medicine but don't have that level of education. And then they could do much more. The goods scenario is basically where AI lowers the cost of elite expertise, makes it more available and increases the value of basically the middle skilled workers of the future.
For the last four decades, technology has been mostly a force for greater inequality and a shrinking middle class. But new empirical evidence suggests that the age of AI could be different. We speak to MIT's David Autor, one of the greatest labor economists in the world, who envisions a future where we use AI to make a wider array of workers much better at a whole range of jobs and help rebuild the middle class.
This episode was produced by Dave Blanchard and edited by Molly Messick. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Katherine Silva. Jess Jiang is Planet Money's acting executive producer.
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