Restrepo (2025) develops a framework for economic growth in which Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) can perform any human task given sufficient computational resources. In his model, all economically essential "bottleneck" work is eventually automated, wages converge to the computational cost of replicating human work, and labor's share of GDP approaches zero as computational resources expand. This note relaxes one of his assumptions: that all task types have uniform automation costs. Drawing on Moravec's Paradox [1]--the observation that tasks humans find effortless (perception, mobility, manipulation) often require enormous computational resources, while tasks humans find difficult (mathematics, logic) require relatively modest computation--we extend his model to allow for differential automation costs across cognitive and physical tasks.

If A.I. Can Diagnose Patients, What Are Doctors For? Large language models are transforming medicine--but the technology comes with side effects. "I'm worried these tools will erode my ability to make an independent diagnosis," a medical student said. In 2017, Matthew Williams, a thirtysomething software engineer with an athletic build and a bald head, went for a long bike ride in the hills of San Francisco. Afterward, at dinner with some friends, he ordered a hamburger, fries, and a milkshake. Midway through the meal, he felt so full that he had to ask someone to drive him home. That night, Williams awoke with a sharp pain in his abdomen that he worried was appendicitis. He went to a nearby emergency clinic, where doctors told him that he was probably constipated. They gave him some laxatives and sent him on his way. A few hours later, Williams's pain intensified. He vomited and felt as though his stomach might burst. A friend took him to a hospital, where a CT scan revealed cecal volvulus--a medical emergency in which part of the intestine twists in on itself, cutting off the digestive tract. The previous medical team had missed the condition, and may even have exacerbated it by giving him laxatives. Williams was rushed to the operating room, where surgeons removed about six feet of his intestines. After recovering from surgery, Williams began to experience severe diarrhea almost every time he ate. Doctors told him that his bowel just needed time to heal. "It got to the point where I couldn't go out, because I would constantly eat something that would make me sick," he said.

The question of whether AI substitutes or complements human work is central to debates on the future of work. This paper examines the impact of AI on skill demand and compensation in the U.S. economy, analysing 12 million online job vacancies from 2018 to 2023. It investigates internal effects (within-job substitution and complementation) and external effects (across occupations, industries, and regions). Our findings reveal a significant increase in demand for AI-complementary skills, such as digital literacy, teamwork, and resilience, alongside rising wage premiums for these skills in AI roles like Data Scientist. Conversely, substitute skills, including customer service and text review, have declined in both demand and value within AI-related positions. Examining external effects, we find a notable rise in demand for complementary skills in non-AI roles linked to the growth of AI-related jobs in specific industries or regions. At the same time, there is a moderate decline in non-AI roles requiring substitute skills. Overall, AI's complementary effect is up to 50% larger than its substitution effect, resulting in net positive demand for skills. These results, replicated for the UK and Australia, highlight AI's transformative impact on workforce skill requirements. They suggest reskilling efforts should prioritise not only technical AI skills but also complementary skills like ethics and digital literacy.

What will likely be the effect of the emergence of ChatGPT and other forms of artificial intelligence (AI) on the skill premium? To address this question, we develop a nested constant elasticity of substitution production function that distinguishes between industrial robots and AI. Industrial robots predominantly substitute for low-skill workers, whereas AI mainly helps to perform the tasks of high-skill workers. We show that AI reduces the skill premium as long as it is more substitutable for high-skill workers than low-skill workers are for high-skill workers.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is often touted as the most exciting technology of our age, promising to transform our economies, lives, and capabilities. Some even see AI as making steady progress towards the development of'intelligence machines' that will soon surpass human skills in most areas. AI has indeed made rapid advances over the last decade or so, especially owing to the application of modern statistical and machine learning techniques to huge unstructured data sets. It has already influenced almost all industries: AI algorithms are now used by all online platforms and in industries that range from manufacturing to health, finance, wholesale, and retail. Government agencies have also started relying on AI, particularly in the criminal justice system and in customs and immigration control.

Who is winning the race for jobs between robots and humans? Last year, two leading economists described a future in which humans come out ahead. But now they've declared a different winner: the robots. The industry most affected by automation is manufacturing. For every robot per thousand workers, up to six workers lost their jobs and wages fell by as much as three-fourths of a percent, according to a new paper by the economists, Daron Acemoglu of M.I.T. and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University.

The debate over automation has been overshadowed by more immediate economic problems created by the coronavirus crisis. But when things return to some semblance of normality, it's sure to crop up again and may well play a role in how a recovery takes shape. The basic question is whether automation is good or bad for average workers. The latest salvo against the robots comes from economists Daron Acemoglu, Andrea Manera, and Pascual Restrepo. In a recent National Bureau of Economic Research paper entitled "Does the US Tax Code Favor Automation?," they argue that taxes are higher on labor than on capital equipment, causing companies to invest too much in machines and not enough in manpower.

When the coronavirus outbreak first hit the Plaza Minorista market, Edison Palacio knew that it would take more than disinfectant and face masks to contain it. So he decided to use artificial intelligence. Mr Palacio is the director of the densely packed market which sits in the heart of the Colombian city of Medellín. Every day, up to 15,000 people flood into the giant building where more than 3,300 vendors sell fruits, vegetables, meats, eggs, spices, grains and clothes. They are a crucial link bringing food grown on farms to a metropolitan area of nearly four million people.

Predicting the course of technological progress is extremely difficult. Just because worries about human obsolescence ultimately turned out to be misplaced in the Industrial Revolution doesn't mean that the same happy result must necessarily prevail this time around. So the persistent question about artificial intelligence - or "robots" in common parlance - is whether they will make human workers obsolete. Already, occupations that employ very large numbers of people, such as commercial trucking, are under threat. Workers displaced by machine learning may be able to find new, even more valuable, things to do, as happened when industrial technology displaced craft manufacturers over a century ago, or they may not - and even if they do, getting there may involve a long and bumpy road. It's a rich topic, as I was reminded this week at a Bloomberg Ideas conference, where I sat on a panel discussing the economics of artificial intelligence.

As lower-skill jobs are swept away by technology, economists are wondering what kinds of skills workers will need -- and how the economic benefits of automation will be distributed. Perhaps the hottest topic in economics these days is how far robots and artificial intelligence (AI) will go in replacing humans in the workplace -- and how quickly the changes will unfold. For decades, technology has been replacing mid-level jobs in the United States and other advanced economies. But the pace has quickened, with the effects billowing through not just automotive factories and electronics facilities but also law offices, operating rooms, and the roads we drive on. Some economists, including MIT's Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, have argued that, in addition to eliminating jobs, technology will also open the way to new ones.