AI's real threat to jobs isn't job loss, it's lower paychecks, new research says

This study found that between 2022-2024, there was a negative correlation between "jobs with high AI exposure" (i.e., tech jobs) and % change in wages. According to them, software engineering has both the biggest wage decline and most AI exposure.

There's a much more reasonable explanation here.. tech jobs had the most wage growth during COVID and this was a pullback. The time frame they used (2022-2024) was also pre-coding agents, where GPT-3.5/GPT-4 were frontier models.

Right, whats happening here is the first sales pitch to CEOs: "AI will let you fire everyone" is not panning out (duh)... so for the next trick, "AI will at least let you pay them less" is a natural pivot. Both are absurd. Just let the hypecycle die off in peace already.

We've seen this play out in history multiple times, already, so it's pretty ignorant to ignore the evidence.

Carpenters aren't being paid less because we have framing nailguns and pre-fabricated trusses. Instead their skillset had to evolve. In fact, smaller crews can do larger projects... which doesn't mean fire your crewmembers, it means a builder company can take on more projects in parallel, leading to bigger profits through volume.

"AI"s are useful tools. The skills in a post-AI world are different. Lower wages will be experienced by people that can't evolve, that's all.

If the companies find a new way to make their products cheaper to produce and their services cheaper to provide - will it lead to lower prices as well?

It's probably both, but either way it means a worse life for people who work for a living