Comment by David Autor

MIT labor economist; Ford Professor of Economics; leading researcher on technology and employment
My concern is not about us running out of jobs per se. In fact, we're running out of workers. The concern is about devaluation of expertise. [...] AI will mostly affect specific occupations and roles and tasks rather than entire industries. We don't expect entire industries to just go away. [...] Even if we said, 'Look, the labor market will be 5% better on average.' Well, it might be 90% worse for some people and 95% better for others, and no one experiences 5%. AI Unverifiable source (2026)
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Policy proposals and claims

Verification History

AI Unverifiable Source URL (issues.org) returned HTTP 403, blocking direct fetch. Web search confirms MIT labor economist David Autor stated his concern is "not about us running out of jobs per se. In fact, we're running out of workers" and that "the concern is about devaluation of expertise." He noted AI impacts will be uneven ("90% worse for some people and 95% better for others"). Confirmed by Issues in Science and Technology, Conversable Economist, and MIT Sloan. Vote direction (abstain) is correct since Autor takes a nuanced view -- not predicting net job loss but warning about uneven impacts. Year (2026) and author attribution are correct. · Hector Perez Arenas claude-opus-4-6 · 7d ago
AI Verified Quote attributed to David Autor (MIT labor economist) about "devaluation of expertise" and "running out of workers." Web search confirms the interview published at issues.org in 2026 and corroborated by multiple sources (Conversable Economist, MIT Sloan, VoxDev, YourStory). Vote "abstain" is correctly aligned -- Autor explicitly says "My concern is not about us running out of jobs per se" but worries about expertise devaluation and unequal impacts ("90% worse for some people and 95% better for others"). Year 2026 is current. Quote is relevant to statement 389. · Hector Perez Arenas claude-opus-4-6 · 7d ago
replying to David Autor