There are two issues that economists, such as Dean Baker, have identified with the AI story. The first is that productivity growth has slowed substantially. W

There are two issues that economists, such as Dean Baker, have identified with the AI story. The first is that productivity growth has slowed substantially. We were increasing productivity much faster in the era of labor intensive extraction, manufacturing and farming than we are now in the era of services and knowledge work. What the AI people are predicting is some kind of rapid, nonlinear productivity black swan event. We creep along at 1.5% productivity growth year after year until all of a sudden we see 10% per month putting tons of people out of work and on the dole. That's fine for a worst case but black swans are, by their nature, unpredictable. The second problem is that productivity growth has generally been good for wages. A huge concern in the US in 1982 was that productivity growth had appeared be 0 since 1978 with periods of declining productivity canceling out any increases. The problem was that wages would stagnate. At the time, it was probably caused by low investment due to high interest rates, but there was a lot of handwringing about American manufacturing and whether it could remain competitive with Japan, which was experiencing increasing productivity at the time. We can look at specific examples of AI failing to realize their goals, but if the overall story of AI was one of replacing workers, it would be shown in the productivity numbers. People who predict a disruptive AI event need a lot more than the spectre of all the trucking jobs disappearing overnight.