AI Isn’t Good Enough
skventures.substack.com
On a recent cross-country trip—I (Paul) drove from California to Illinois and back again. On the drive, I saw a sign I had never seen before: In a McDonald’s window it said $1,000 SIGNING BONUS. That was not a thing when I was a teenager doing minimum-wage jobs. No one paid you $1,000 signing bonuses to work for fast-food restaurants.

I thought it was an interesting read. It’s a very Pollyannish piece about the future where AI is somehow able to enable a workforce productivity revolution to save the American economy from its declining labor force.

But in the meantime they make the argument based on some quantitative economic work that in the last few years, growth in employment has slowed because automation is displacing many more workers than new jobs are being created from the automation. They even admit that this is mostly achieved by shoveling costs onto the consumer. The self-awareness is wild.