What A.I. Is Actually Doing to the Economy

**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
This podcast is supported by On Investing, an original podcast from Charles Schwab. Each week, hosts Liz Ann Saunders, Schwab's Chief Investment Strategist, and Colin Martin, Head of Fixed Income Research and Strategy for the Schwab Center for Financial Research, along with their guests, analyze economic developments and bring context to conversations around stocks, fixed income, the economy and more. Download the latest episode and subscribe at schwab.com/oninvesting, or wherever you get your podcasts.

**SPEAKER_2** (0:31)
I want you to fill in the blank for me. I feel blank about AI.

**SPEAKER_3** (0:39)
I feel mixed feelings about AI.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:48)
I feel anxious about AI.

**SPEAKER_5** (0:51)
It's a love-hate relationship for sure.

**SPEAKER_4** (0:53)
Completely conflicted.

**SPEAKER_6** (0:55)
AI is amazing, and it's making me a better writer, but it's also taking my job away.

**Zolan Kano-Youngs** (1:01)
From The New York Times, I'm Zolan Kano-Youngs filling in as host. This is The Daily.
As AI becomes more advanced, people are getting increasingly nervous about how it could change the economy and their jobs.

**SPEAKER_8** (1:17)
I'm seeing a lot of job loss because of it.

**SPEAKER_6** (1:20)
It's a threat to my profession. I really have to rethink what I do for a living and probably do something else.

**SPEAKER_4** (1:25)
Oh my God, this thing is going to take my job and not only is going to, but actually did.

**Zolan Kano-Youngs** (1:31)
But for all the anxiety, what AI is actually doing to the economy remains pretty murky.

**SPEAKER_5** (1:38)
Seems like it's taking over being me.

**Zolan Kano-Youngs** (1:41)
Today, Chief Economics Correspondent Ben Casselman on why AI's impact has been so hard to pin down and what we can learn from the tech disruptions of the past. It's Monday, July 27th.
How are we doing?

**Ben Casselman** (2:04)
Doing well.

**Zolan Kano-Youngs** (2:05)
Appreciate you doing this.

**Ben Casselman** (2:06)
Yeah. Excited to sit down for this. Excited to be hosted by you.
I'm trying to accumulate as many daily hosts as I can.

**SPEAKER_10** (2:15)
Like Pokemon. That's right. Exactly. All set.

**Zolan Kano-Youngs** (2:19)
All right. I'm just going to jump in.

**Ben Casselman** (2:21)
Let's do it.

**Zolan Kano-Youngs** (2:22)
Ben, I'm picking up on a lot of anxiety when it comes to how artificial intelligence will impact our economy.
We know from polling that about 70% of Americans think AI will lead to fewer jobs. So as someone who talks to economists every day, how much of your time is being taken up by this question of how AI will impact the economy?

**Ben Casselman** (2:45)
I think it is arguably the important question. We talk all the time about tariffs and oil prices and all of these shocks that are hitting the economy, and those are all of course incredibly important issues.
But I think it's very possible that if you and I are sitting here in five years or 10 years looking back on this period, that the thing we'll be talking about is AI and kind of the early signs of how it was affecting the economy. I don't think we know what that conversation will look like. I don't think we know what big change we will have seen, but it certainly feels like this is the moment where it's all starting.

**Zolan Kano-Youngs** (3:27)
Right. This is interesting because sometimes I feel like we hear AI is going to be a godsend to workers. It's going to make us all 100% more productive, or it'll wipe out all white collar jobs entirely.
What do you make of those predictions?

**Ben Casselman** (3:44)
I think there are a couple of answers to that question. One is that it's early. We're still figuring out how to use this technology. It's still being rolled out.
But beyond that, we don't even really know with confidence what's happening now. Predicting the future is hard, but even knowing the immediate moment is difficult because our economic data really wasn't designed and isn't up to capturing a change that's happening this rapidly in anything close to real time.

**Zolan Kano-Youngs** (4:15)
Can you explain that a little bit more to me? Why don't we don't?

**Ben Casselman** (4:18)
Well, let me take a simple example of this. We get the monthly jobs report, and we talk about how many jobs were added or lost in the economy in a given month.
If you go and look in that report the next time it comes out, and you want to look at what happened with tech jobs, you will not find that anywhere in the report. Because we don't break out tech as its own industry. These industry categories were established literally decades ago. Tech is kind of sprinkled between a few different categories. Some of it's in the information sector, which also includes newspapers, includes us.