NYT: What 1931's labor disruption can teach us about AI's impact on work
danielrock · x · 2026-10-23
A New York Times deep-dive by Ben Casselman revisits past episodes of technology-driven labor disruption to frame AI's impact on work. In December 1931, with the Great Depression raging, economists at the AEA meeting debated dial telephones obsoleteing switchboard operators, talkies displacing theater musicians, and trucks replacing teamsters — Harvard's Sumner Slichter warned change was happening "more rapidly than in any previous age" yet society failed to treat it as a social problem. Today's economists apply the same lens to programmers, scriptwriters and drivers; history suggests outcomes can vary widely.
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