Economists are constantly churning out fascinating research, and as much as we try at Planet Money, there's a lot of stuff we don't cover. So, periodically, we like to do a little round-up of interesting economic papers we've come across and share it with you in the Planet Money newsletter. (If you're not already subscribed, you can subscribe here).
Welcome to the latest Planet Money Econ Paper Roundup!
Creating a world with “Pro-Worker Artificial Intelligence”
Recently, Jack Dorsey, the co-founder and CEO of Block (and co-founder and former CEO of Twitter), announced that he was laying off 4,000 workers — or about 40% of Block's workforce. And he suggested a big reason for the layoffs was AI had made many of the workers redundant. Block's stock price surged on the news.
For what it's worth, analysts are skeptical that AI is the real reason Block is laying off so many workers. They suggest Block is downsizing because its executives made the mistake of overhiring in recent years. Meanwhile, their stock price is down more than 80% since its 2021 peak. They suggest that invoking AI as the reason for layoffs was basically PR spin.
Nonetheless, Dorsey's announcement of AI-related layoffs took econ social media by storm.
Probably because, as public surveys suggest, the majority of American workers are suffering from what you might call AI anxiety. Can you blame them? The technology has made dramatic advances in recent years, and tech leaders, like Jack Dorsey, blame — or maybe scapegoat — AI for job losses. Meanwhile, AI executives are making mind-blowing predictions about how AI is going to kill all sorts of jobs in the near future.
In a new essay, a group of rockstar economists from MIT offers a more hopeful vision for the future of human work. One in which humans collaborate with AI to get better at existing jobs, AI creates new jobs, and human workers thrive in the age of AI. It's a vision they call “pro-worker…