Economists are beginning to admit that they may have been wrong that AI will never replace human jobs

Economists are largely among the few groups of professionals who have firmly rejected the AI ​​Kool-Aid. The worst-case scenario consensus seemed to center on the idea that AI could upend the job market, but wouldn’t completely destroy it. ATMs haven’t eliminated bank tellers, the parable says, meaning new technologies are no guarantee that automation will actually change the entire face of an industry.

As researchers from the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the Forecasting Research Institute (FRI), and numerous top universities found in a comprehensive economics paper, that mindset could be changing. Over time, top economists are increasingly taking extreme AI perturbations into account in their models. But acknowledging a possibility and accepting its inevitability are two very different things – and there…