Who’s Afraid of an AI Jobs-Apocalypse? Not America, Apparently

The alarms began sounding soon after the arrival of ChatGPT: Artificial intelligence is coming for jobs—good jobs, white-collar jobs.

“Generative AI could substitute up to one-fourth of current work,” Goldman Sachs warned. Automation might take over tasks accounting for nearly 30% of hours worked across the US economy by 2030, McKinsey said. The International Monetary Fund said that in advanced economies “about 60% of jobs are exposed,” and that of these, “about half may be negatively affected by AI.”

Generative AI is threatening because it cheaply does things that lie at the heart of the white-collar workforce—tasks like writing, analyzing, ...