In 1798, Thomas Malthus looked at deer and saw doom. In nature, he noted, unchecked populations grow until they consume everything: deer overgraze the forest, starve, die off. He believed humans would follow the same curve, and he predicted the population would always outpace food supply, triggering famine, war and collapse. The math was clean - the logic brutal - and for a while, it all seemed inevitable. Except it never happened. Instead of famine, we got fertilizers and ever-growing crop yields.
The weirdest thing of all in economics, says Brandeis University Economics Professor Benjamin Shiller, is that weirdness is closely tied to fate in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). The weirder you are, he tells Fortune, the better off you'll be. In his new book " AI Economics: How Technology Transforms Jobs, Markets, Life, and Our Future," Shiller, argues that the more bizarre your job, the less likely that AI will take it.
For example, among professionals in occupations that can be done remotely, 35% to 40% worked remotely on Thursdays and Fridays in 2024, compared with only 15% in 2019. On Mondays, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, nearly 30% worked remotely, versus 10% to 15% five years earlier. And white-collar employees have also become more likely to log off from work early on Fridays.
"When...ChatGPT came along, we were all very mesmerized by how powerful it is, how much work it does," said Wei Jiang, professor of finance at Emory University, in a phone interview with The Register. "So we, like other people, anticipated if AI is doing our work, we can work less. And I just find myself actually working longer. So I checked with a few friends, and every one of them says, 'Hey, we're actually working longer.'"
