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Artificial intelligence is technology's greatest gift to humanity. Or maybe it's the nightmare of countless robots taking over all our jobs, leaving people unable to earn a living. In the race to figure out AI's likely impact on our jobs and our way of life, prophets everywhere are sharing a stormy mix of hopes and fears.
To help understand why the forecasts are all over the place -- and perhaps cut through some of the noise -- we asked three labor economists to give us their analysis of where this is all heading. In the optimists' camp is David Autor, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Meanwhile, Anton Korinek of the University of Virginia offers an unflinching look at what could go wrong. Bridging the gaps is Martha Gimbel, director of Yale University's Budget Lab.
Here are edited excerpts of the conversation.
The number of unemployed
WSJ: How much is AI likely to disrupt jobs and incomes, worldwide?
ANTON KORINEK: I think AI is going to usher in a completely new economic paradigm, kind of like what the Industrial Revolution did. In the 19th century, labor suddenly became the scarce resource. Not land or capital. Since then, wages have gone up 20-fold in advanced countries. But if we have systems that can perform both cognitive and physical functions at humanlike levels, then we are suddenly no longer scarce. Labor's share of income, which is about 60% now, will almost definitely go below 50% in our lifetimes. Maybe much lower.
DAVID AUTOR: I don't think we're entering a software apocalypse. AI will reshape jobs in more than one direction. In some cases, it will make work more expertise-intensive -- and smaller in head count. Technology automates, it complements and it creates new expertise and new work. I don't think we're headed into a new world where human judgment, moral reasoning, empathy and know-how have no economic value.
MARTHA GIMBEL: There's a taste for human interaction that I think is being dismissed by AI's biggest advocates. A lot of the conversation about machine-based super-intelligence right now is being driven by Silicon Valley, and there are a couple issues with that. A lot of jobs in Silicon Valley -- like coding -- have clear goals and endpoints. In real life, most jobs are very messy. It's very hard to turn them into parameters you can optimize.
WSJ: Let's put specific numbers on this. We're chatting at a moment when the U.S. jobless rate is 4.4%. How much do you think AI will send that rate higher or lower in 10 years?
AUTOR: If we handle this transition well, the unemployment rate won't rise substantially, though it's possible the share of people who choose to work will fall. They won't show up in unemployment, but they will show up in our further fractured politics.
GIMBEL: So much of this depends on how quickly technological disruption happens and how quickly new jobs emerge. In general, I think this conversation underrates macroeconomic factors that could drive up the unemployment rate.
KORINEK: Given the rapid pace of advances in AI, I feel a lot of uncertainty even about where the labor market will be in 12 or 24 months. In 10 years from now, our world may be transformed by artificial general intelligence. Employment or unemployment could be anywhere.
The new jobs
WSJ: Cheer me up. What new jobs will AI sustain or create?
AUTOR: The view that everything exposed to AI will shrivel up and die makes no sense. We've been using computers for decades and that has not eliminated all work. There are now a quarter million data scientists in the U.S., and that's a job that didn't exist without computers. Instead of thinking primarily about running out of jobs, we should think how we will use AI to meet vast unmet needs in healthcare, better education and other tough, societal problems. The one place where I am truly gloomy about AI is the risk it will contribute to political chaos. All signs are that it is favorable to autocracy and disinformation, but not especially helpful to democracy.
GIMBEL: It's hard to imagine a world you've never seen before. If my ancestors in 1812 had been told that I was going to get paid for sitting at my desk and sharing my opinions about AI technology with someone 3,000 miles away, they would have thought that was absurd. It's all a question of consumer preferences. When you have so much more income as a society, what do you choose to buy more of? We don't know. But we've never had a tech revolution where there were fewer jobs at the end of it. Historically, counting out the ability of humans to find new forms of work has been a very bad bet.
KORINEK: In the long run, it's going to be very difficult for people to survive by selling their labor, as we have done since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. We may need new systems of income distribution. The details don't matter as much as the fact that it will be independent of the market value of your labor.
WSJ: Whose livelihood is most at risk, if we're heading toward an AI-centered economy?
KORINEK: It almost certainly looks like it will be white-collar work, or what some people call "the laptop professions." That doesn't mean that all the jobs in fields such as law, finance, accounting and consulting will disappear overnight. But there will be strong competitive pressures to automate them.
AUTOR: Workers who do information-intensive services that aren't highly trained. Call-center workers could easily be displaced by AI, for example. This risk is especially ominous for the developing world, where many back-office jobs for the rich world are done by lower-paid workers. Others who may fall into this at-risk category include language translators and some middle managers. The same goes for illustrators, ad copywriters and many other professionals whose intellectual property is effectively being repurposed by AI workers as a new competitor. Overall we may get some big upside benefits, and we may make some terrible mistakes.
GIMBEL: The transition is always bumpy for some people. I'm less worried about younger workers. They have the least occupational capital to lose, and they probably have greater facility with new AI tools. But for older workers especially, if they are displaced, their children may be better off but their own economic situation never recovers.
WSJ: What might slow AI's ascendancy?
GIMBEL: Anything involving human contact. We've been able to fully automate piano players for more than a century, but we haven't done so. That's not what people want. I understand all the arguments about robotics, but I don't care how good the robot is. I'm not having a robot raise my 1 1/2 -year-old. I will pay what I have to, in order to get her into the care of humans.
KORINEK: There are two main areas where AI systems aren't quite as good as humans yet. One is dynamic learning. They may get there shortly. The other is physical functions. Consider care for the elderly. Right now, an AI or robotics approach is neither cost-competitive nor technically feasible. Besides, we really appreciate the human connection. But eventually, we'll have statistics saying that AI-powered machines are more reliable and have fewer accidents.
AUTOR: Many professions -- such as law and academia -- have guilds that are very resistant to change. Their approach is: "If AI wants to do my grunt work, have at it. If AI wants to do our expert tasks, that will only happen over my dead body." That will slow things down, but there will be some degree of accommodation, because the productivity gains are too large to leave on the table. I don't think AI will supplant teachers. Education is effective when humans motivate humans. If education meant nothing more than providing rich content, libraries and YouTube would have put our schools out of business decades ago.
Opting out
WSJ: Can some of us opt out, in favor of a slower-paced, more artisanal life?
AUTOR: You are asking about what I call "the Etsy economy," which is based on the notion that we value certain things because they are done by people. What makes soccer amazing is that people are doing it. You could go to a robotic soccer game and see robots doing things faster and better than people can, but that's not as interesting. We will continue to pay for those things, but I don't think sentimentality drives enough economic activity to be the last hope of mankind. I might want a handmade basket from Etsy even though there's a machine-made one on Amazon that costs a 10th as much. But I don't think such sentimentality can drive a sufficient amount of economic activity to employ most of us.
KORINEK: We might choose to preserve some jobs that AI models could perform. People don't like it when their livelihoods are disrupted, and if unemployment goes too high, I don't want to imagine how much discontent that could cause. So we might have some very amazing AI models that won't be rolled out as broadly as they could be.
GIMBEL: My husband works in theater, and I wonder if people might develop a greater taste for live entertainment, because there's so much digital content available that it just becomes less interesting. If you have so much more income and productivity as a society, luxury goods and luxury experiences become more affordable. It's exciting when you see other humans doing things.
WSJ: Each of you has a unique take on AI's likely impact. Within our three-expert panel, what do you think your two peers are missing?
KORINEK: I listen carefully to my fellow panelists when it comes to their assessment of short-term labor market developments, and I usually learn a lot from them. But I do believe that once artificial general intelligence is starting to roll out across our economy, the traditional economic models they are using will cease to be a reliable guide to the future.
AUTOR: I agree with Martha about the underappreciated value of human creativity, but I think too much emphasis on these examples leads us to neglect the real risks. We've seen it go badly in the past, and I think it can go badly again. Anton is likening our work to the work of horses, whose value was eliminated by the internal combustion engine. But people aren't horses. We are the deciders.
GIMBEL: One thing I always have to remind myself of is that economies can be surprisingly resilient. So even when there's a huge shock, humans find a way to drive economic activity forward.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
June 28, 2026 13:00 ET (17:00 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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