The impacts of artificial intelligence on society and politics are getting more attention but the macroeconomic impacts are just scratching the surface.
Goldman Sachs chief economist Jan Hatzius write that generative AI, despite its uncertain potential, has shown remarkable progress in creating content similar to human-generated output and improving human-machine communication. He highlights the potential for significant impacts on the labor force.
“Despite significant uncertainty around the potential of generative AI, its ability to generate content that is indistinguishable from human-created output and to break down communication barriers between humans and machines reflects a major advancement with potentially large macroeconomic effects … We find that roughly two-thirds of US occupations are exposed to some degree of automation by AI, and that of those occupations which are exposed, most have a significant — but partial — share of their workload (25-50 per cent) that can be replaced … We estimate that one-fourth of current work tasks could be automated by AI in the US, with particularly high exposures in administrative (46 per cent) and legal (44 per cent) professions and low exposures in physically-intensive professions such as construction (6 per cent) and maintenance."
