AI seen cutting worker numbers, survey by staffing company Adecco shows
Reuters' April 5, 2024 report on the Adecco survey is a good reminder that expectations about job loss are not the same as demonstrated causal outcomes. It is useful wherever people slide from speculative trend talk to a confident story about what one technology will inevitably do to the labor market. The fallacy here is Luddite fallacy: labor-saving technology is treated as if it must reduce total employment or human usefulness simply because it automates some existing tasks. That matters here because new technology can displace real jobs and create painful transitions. A better analysis would remember that the fallacy is the stronger claim that automation as such can only destroy work, rather than reorganize it, lower costs, create new roles, or shift labor elsewhere.
Reuters · 2024-04-05
Analysis-US port strike throws spotlight on big union foe: automation
Reuters' October 4, 2024 analysis of the dockworker strike is valuable because it resists the easy story that automation is either an obvious job-killer or an obvious productivity savior. It exposes how often both sides of a public dispute compress tradeoffs into one emotionally convenient causal narrative. The fallacy here is Luddite fallacy: labor-saving technology is treated as if it must reduce total employment or human usefulness simply because it automates some existing tasks. That matters here because new technology can displace real jobs and create painful transitions. A better analysis would remember that the fallacy is the stronger claim that automation as such can only destroy work, rather than reorganize it, lower costs, create new roles, or shift labor elsewhere.
Reuters · 2024-10-04
Debates over generative AI in 2024 often jumped straight from 'this automates part of my job' to 'therefore it will inevitably make people broadly unemployable,' skipping the more complicated evidence about substitution, augmentation, and new roles. The fallacy here is Luddite fallacy: labor-saving technology is treated as if it must reduce total employment or human usefulness simply because it automates some existing tasks. That matters here because new technology can displace real jobs and create painful transitions. A better analysis would remember that the fallacy is the stronger claim that automation as such can only destroy work, rather than reorganize it, lower costs, create new roles, or shift labor elsewhere.
The U.S. dockworker fight over port automation in October 2024 showed why the issue is serious, but it also illustrated the need to distinguish real bargaining and transition questions from the blanket claim that productivity-enhancing technology is always socially worse. The fallacy here is Luddite fallacy: labor-saving technology is treated as if it must reduce total employment or human usefulness simply because it automates some existing tasks. That matters here because new technology can displace real jobs and create painful transitions. A better analysis would remember that the fallacy is the stronger claim that automation as such can only destroy work, rather than reorganize it, lower costs, create new roles, or shift labor elsewhere.
