Howard Marks is raising a different kind of alarm on artificial intelligence, saying the biggest danger is not mass unemployment but something harder to measure and far more destabilizing to society.
In a fresh interview with Bloomberg, the Oaktree Capital co-founder shifts from markets to society, believing that AI could change the nature of work in ways that reach deeper than economics.
Marks says his concern stems from the impact of the Internet revolution on society about 25 years ago, when the tech cycle displaced white-collar workers and created new blue-collar roles. He notes that while headline job counts remained intact, the cycle degraded the quality of work.
“But it has not raised unemployment because the internet eliminated white-collar jobs that were replaced by blue-collar jobs, like people who pick stuff in warehouses and send it out in e-commerce. So job count is not down, but job quality is down. And I think that this is very worrisome.”
He says tech disruption appears to be tied to a deeper social fallout.
“When we lost jobs to automation and offshoring, I think that that coincided with the opiate epidemic, and not only in amount, but also in location. And I think it’s a natural consequence of people sitting around all day, and, you know, even if we can find a way to replace their income, I worry about purposelessness.”
Marks says the real threat of the AI revolution is a society filled with people who no longer see a role for themselves.
“We get so much from our jobs other than a paycheck, and you can’t replace that stuff. So I worry for society.”
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