Miguel Afonso Caetano"Imagine that automating a task requires a $10 million dollar investment (buying the software, onboarding, connecting it to the rest of the system, etc.). In one case, this task is the only non-automated task left in a job; in the other case, if this task is automated, there are 19 other non-automated tasks left. The firm has a much higher incentive to automate the task in the first case than the second because it can then replace the worker and reap the cost savings involved.1
Because of this, firms have a stronger incentive to invest in technology to automate low dimensional jobs. In a low-dimensional job, automating all or most of the core tasks can eliminate the position and the wage bill altogether. That makes the return to automation much larger. In other words, not all “unexposed” tasks matter equally: in some jobs the remaining tasks still keep the existing worker at the firm; in others they do not.
This gives a clear prediction: even if a job is not currently “exposed” to AI, in the sense that AI is not being used for the tasks involved, if it is low dimensional and the technology is getting close to automating the tasks, it should be considered at risk. Firms will work harder and invest more to automate the task(s) involved than in the case where jobs have many non-automated tasks.
This is why we think people should be more worried about jobs like trucking and warehousing."
https://aleximas.substack.com/p/how-will-ai-driven-automation-actually
