主讲人：Anton Korinek（University of Virginia）

主持人：余昌华（北京大学国家发展研究院）

时间：2023年3月21日（周二）上午9:00-10:30（北京时间）

地点：承泽园246教室

Zoom会议号：926 3889 7210

密码：908060

摘要：This paper considers the labor market and distributional implications of a scenario of ever-more-intelligent autonomous machines that substitute for human labor and drive down wages. We lay out three concerns arising from such a scenario and evaluate recent predictions and objections to these concerns. Then we analyze how a utilitarian social planner would allocate work and income if these concerns start to materialize. As the income produced by autonomous machines rises and the value of labor declines, a utilitarian planner finds it optimal to phase out work, beginning with workers who have low labor productivity and job satisfaction, since they have comparative advantage in enjoying leisure. This is in stark contrast to welfare systems that force individuals with low labor productivity to work. If there are significant wage declines, avoiding mass misery will require other ways of distributing income than labor markets, whether via sufficiently well-distributed capital ownership or via benefits. Recipients could still engage in work for its own sake if they enjoy work amenities such as structure, purpose and meaning. If work gives rise to positive externalities such as social connections or political stability, or if individuals undervalue the benefits of work because of internalities, then a social planner would incentivize work. However, in the long run, the planner might be able to achieve a higher level of social welfare by adopting alternative ways of providing these benefits.

主讲人介绍：Anton is a David M. Rubenstein Fellow at the Brookings Institution, a Professor at the University of Virginia, Department of Economics and Darden School of Business as well as a Research Associate at the NBER, a Research Fellow at the CEPR and the Economics of AI Lead at the Centre for the Governance of AI. He received his PhD from Columbia University in 2007 after several years of work experience in the IT and financial sectors. He has also worked at Johns Hopkins and at the University of Maryland and has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University, the World Bank, the IMF, the BIS and numerous central banks.