Artificial intelligence: opportunity or challenge for the US economy?

Yet most of the concerns about the rise of the robots are centered on distributional concerns. The robots might boost productivity growth and therefore the growth of economic output, but will they displace large swaths of workers? This first fear--that robots will massively displace labor across manufacturing and services industries--is a concern because in the future additional capital investment in all manner of robots may well supplant labor rather than supplement it. If robots can essentially replace a large chunk of labor, then businesses will stop hiring workers and instead replace them with robots. Imagine an economy-wide version of robots on factory floors.