【正文】 e of the main ways that technology increases productivity is by decreasing the number of labor hours needed to create a unit of output. Labor productivity increases generally translate into increases in average wages, giving workers the opportunity to cut back on work hours and to afford more goods and services. Living standards and leisure hours could both increase, although to the degree that inequality increases—as it has in recent decades—it offsets some of those gains. AI should be weled for its potential economic benefits. Those economic benefits, however, will not necessarily be evenly distributed across society. For example, the 19th century was characterized by technological change that raised the productivity of lowerskilled workers relative to that of higherskilled workers. Highlyskilled artisans who controlled and executed full production processes saw their livelihoods threatened by the rise of mass production technologies. Ultimately, many skilled crafts were replaced by the bination of machines and lowerskilled labor. Output per hour rose while inequality declined, driving up average living standards, but the labor of some highskill workers was no longer as valuable in the market. In contrast, technological change tended to work in a different direction throughout the late 20th century. The advent of puters and the Inter raised the relative productivity of higher skilled workers. Routineintensive occupations that focused on predictable, easilyprogrammable tasks—such as switchboard operators, filing clerks, travel agents, and assembly line workers— were particularly vulnerable to replacement by new technologies. Some occupations were virtually eliminated and demand for others reduced. Research suggests that technological innovation over this period increased the productivity of those engaged in abstract thinking, creative tasks, and problemsolving and was therefore at least partially responsible for the substantial growth in jobs employing such traits. Shifting demand towards more skilled labor raised the relative pay of this group, contributing to rising inequality. At the same time, a 1 A more extensive introductory discussion of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and related policy topics can be found in the Administration‘s first report on this subject. See The White House, ―Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence,‖ October 20xx ( . w hite house .g ov/sites/de fault/file s/w hiteh ouse _file s/m icro sites/ostp/N S T C/p rep aring_ for_the _ futu re_ o ). ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE, AUTOMATION, AND THE ECONOMY 2 slowdown in the rate of improvement in education, and institutional changes such as the reduction in unionization and decline in the minimum wage, also contributed to inequality— underscoring that technological changes do not uniquely determine outes. Today, it may be challenging to predict exactly which jobs will be most immediately affected by AIdriven automation. Because AI is not a single technology, but rather a collection of technologies that are applied to specific tasks, the effects of AI will be felt unevenly through the economy. Some tasks will be more easily automated than others, and some jobs will be affected more than others—both negatively and positively. Some jobs may be automated away, while for others, AIdriven automation will make many workers more productive and increase demand for certain skills. Finally, new jobs are likely to be directly created in areas such as the development and supervision of AI as well as indirectly created in a range of areas throughout the economy as higher ines lead to expanded demand. Recent research suggests that the effects of AI on the labor market in the near term will continue the trend that puterization and munication innovations have driven in recent decades. Researchers‘ estimates on the scale of threatened jobs over the next decade or two range from 9 to 47 percent. For context, every 3 months about 6 percent of jobs in the economy are destroyed by shrinking or closing businesses, while a slightly larger percentage of jobs are added— resulting in rising employment and a roughly constant unemployment rate. The economy has repeatedly proven itself capable of handling this scale of change, although it would depend on how rapidly the changes happen and how concentrated the losses are in specific occupations that are hard to shift from. Research consistently finds that the jobs that are threatened by automation are highly concentrated among lowerpaid, lowerskilled, and lesseducated workers. This means that automation will continue to put downward pressure on demand for this group, putting downward pressure on wages and upward pressure on inequality. In the longerrun, there may be different or larger effects. One possibility is superstarbiased technological change, where the benefits of technology accrue to an even smaller portion of society than just highlyskilled workers. The winnertakemost nature of information technology markets means that only a few may e to dominate markets. If labor productivity increases do not translate into wage increases, then the large economic gains brought about by AI could accrue to a select few. Instead of broadly shared prosperity for workers and consumers, this might push towards reduced petition and increased wealth inequality. Historically and across countries, however, there has been a strong relationship between productivity and wages—and with more AI the most plausible oute will be a bination of higher wages and more opportunities for leisure for a wide range of workers. But the degree that this materializes depends not just on the nature of technological change but importantly on the policy and institutional choices that are made about how to prepare workers for AI and