Plentiful, high-paying jobs in the age of AI
Source: Noahpinion
The resurgence of comparative advantage economics as a defense against AI displacement anxiety signals a dangerous underestimation of how AI differs from previous technological shifts—it’s not just another factor of production that humans can out-compete in, but a general-purpose intelligence that may collapse the wage-earning value of human comparative advantage itself across multiple domains simultaneously. This rhetorical move reveals how threatened economists feel by genuine uncertainty, resorting to centuries-old frameworks precisely when the conditions those frameworks describe (humans having scarce, differentiated skills) are actively being disrupted.