Yale researchers say that despite the anxiety about AI taking people's jobs, there's very little evidence of it actually happening.
Economists with Yale's Budget Lab, a non-partisan policy research group, took a look at how US employment has changed since the November 2022 debut of ChatGPT and the sequent release of other generative AI models.
They saw nothing to be alarmed about.
"Overall, our metrics indicate that the broader labor market has not experienced a discernible disruption since ChatGPT’s release 33 months ago, undercutting fears that AI automation is currently eroding the demand for cognitive labor across the economy," said Martha Gimbel, Molly Kinder, Joshua Kendall, and Maddie Lee in a report summary.
The leaders of AI companies have been stoking those fears – an effective way to get meetings with lawmakers. In May, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei expressed concern that within five years, AI could cut the number of entry-level white collar jobs in half. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has made similar pronouncements.
And major companies conducting layoffs like IBM and Salesforce have held themselves up as examples of that narrative, though their employee culls may be more focused on outsourcing than automation. Smaller companies like Fiverr have also cited AI amid layoffs.
AI cheerleader Microsoft recently added fuel to the fire with a report on jobs most likely to be affected by AI, only to later distance itself from the blaze by noting, "our study does not draw any conclusions about jobs being eliminated."
In Microsoft's own case, the culls appear to be a way to reduce expenses and mollify investors following its massive capital expenditures on data centers that fuel its AI ambitions.
The Yale researchers' nothingburger result has precedent. In 2023, a study by the United Nations International Labour Organization (ILO) concluded that generative AI would probably not replace most workers.
A study of Danish workers published in April determined that generative AI had no material impact on wages or jobs. Another such study published in February found "overall employment effects are modest, as reduced demand in exposed occupations is offset by productivity-driven increases in labor demand at AI-adopting firms."
There is some contradictory data. A recent Stanford Digital Economy Lab study claims that recent college graduates in occupations most exposed to AI have seen a 13 percent relative decline in employment compared to occupations more insulated from AI.
But the consensus appears to be that generative AI has not had a meaningful impact on the labor market so far. Enterprise skepticism of the technology may be one reason for that. ®