“The ambiguous effect of full automation on wages” by trammell

Audio note: this article contains 95 uses of latex notation, so the narration may be difficult to follow. There's a link to the original text in the episode description. This is one of two posts I’m putting up today on how little economic theory alone has to say about the effects full automation would have on familiar economic variables. The other is “The ambiguous effect of full automation on GDP growth”. Introduction Let full automation mean a state of affairs in which AI and robotics can single-handedly produce everything we like to consume, and which can produce any unit of output using inputs (e.g. electricity) that currently cost less than what humans currently earn just for the labor contribution to producing the same unit. Many people think that, though partial automation has greatly increased wages historically, full automation would inevitably lower wages. Some people have the [...] ---Outline:(00:31) Introduction(02:25) Homogeneous factors(04:33) Constant returns to scale(07:28) Increasing or decreasing returns to scale(08:11) Summary(10:23) Heterogeneous factors(10:27) Heterogeneous labor(12:13) Heterogeneous capitalThe original text contained 8 footnotes which were omitted from this narration. --- First published: February 7th, 2025 Source: https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/cKsknByhuW6Hw2wHj/the-ambiguous-effect-of-full-automation-on-wages --- Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.