White House Economist Rejects AI Doomsday Fears

A White House economist said a report that warned of potential risks to the economy posed by artificial intelligence (AI) “violates some of the basic accounting in economics,” Bloomberg reported Tuesday (Feb. 24).

The report, published by Citrini Research on Sunday (Feb. 22), shook the stock market on Monday (Feb. 23) by saying that if AI makes a lot of human labor obsolete, there could be job losses as well as drops in consumer spending and the stock market, according to the Bloomberg report.

Asked about this speculation by Bloomberg, Pierre Yared, the acting chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers, said: “AI can either be a groundbreaking innovation that increases production, increases income” and expenditure, “or it can be an innovation that ends up not delivering on its promise.”

PYMNTS reported in September that the big question right now is: How will AI impact jobs? The report noted that as AI technologies evolve at warp speed, there is major angst over whether they will fuel mass unemployment. At the same time, some observers believe that the technology will lead to an upskilling of workers rather than an elimination of jobs.

The PYMNTS Intelligence report “Wage to Wallet Index: Measuring the Labor Economy’s Impact on U.S. Financial and Economic Health” found that workers who could be most exposed to automation are not acting as though humanoid robots are about to displace them at scale.

The report found that among Labor Economy workers—the consumer group made up of mostly hourly workers who make under $50,000 a year—a clear majority continue to believe their skills will remain relevant as technology evolves.

The White House released a policy roadmap in July that outlines President Donald Trump’s push to keep America in the lead in the global AI race by focusing on deregulation, building AI infrastructure, expanding export controls and giving chatbots free speech.

“As our global competitors race to exploit these technologies, it is a national security imperative for the United States to achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance,” Trump said in the opening page of “America’s AI Action Plan.”

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