EMERGENCY POD: Is AI already causing youth unemployment?

In our first ever EMERGENCY PODCAST, co-host Seth Benzell is summoned out of paternity leave by Andrey Fradkin to discuss the AI automation paper that’s making headlines around the world. The paper is Canaries in the Coal Mine? Six Facts about the Recent Employment Effects of Artificial Intelligence by Erik Brynjolfsson, Bharat Chandar, and Ruyu Chen. The paper is being heralded as the first evidence that AI is negatively impacting employment for young workers in certain careers. Seth and Andrey dive in, and ask — what do we believe about AI’s effect on youth employment going in, and what can we learn from this new evidence?

Related recent paper on AI and job postings: Generative AI as Seniority-Biased Technological Change: Evidence from U.S. Résumé and Job Posting Data

Also related to our discussion is the China Shock literature, which Nick Decker summarizes in his blog post:

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