AI and the Economy: Work, Wealth and Welfare in the Age of the Thinking Machine

British economist Roger Bootle, a Wolfson Prize laureate, writes about how the widespread implementation of robotics and artificial intelligence in the long term will affect the development of humanity. The author investigates how new technologies influence today’s inflation, the distribution of wealth and power, education, leisure, and business—and analyzes what innovative future awaits all of us based on facts.

“It seems that most people believe that the AI revolution in education will lead to a significant drop in demand for teachers. Actually, such a revolution is already underway. By now, more people have enrolled in Harvard online courses than studied in the university buildings itself over almost 400 years of its existence.”

Bootle describes a model in which work processes will be fully automated, with robots partially replacing employees—yet specialists will still be important, and the same technologies will influence their productivity. Moreover, entirely new types of activities, products, and services will emerge. The economist favors an optimistic scenario: humanity has already gone through an industrial revolution, and the author provides a brief history of the economy over the last 200 years, proving that technology positively affected people’s well-being. Bootle also raises questions of ethics and balance in the global market if the spread of AI is not uniform around the world. Finally, the author talks about key technologies that are already shaping our tomorrow—valuable knowledge to understand which skills are worth betting on.

“The thesis that jobs will completely disappear is wrong. According to experts, although most jobs include elements that can be automated well, only less than 5% are subject to full automation.”