Unless I’m missing something, I don’t think they’re suggesting 48% unemployment by 2029. It was initially confusing for me too, but they’re using employment rate as defined (from clicking on it):
“Percentage of Americans who have jobs. As machine labor gets cheaper than people at more and more tasks, wages fall and workers leave paid work.
This is notably different from the complement of the unemployment rate[1]. For example, Percentage of Americans who have jobs includes people not actively searching for jobs too like stay at home parents, and the 62% (not 52%) number seems to be around the current employment rate.
Also, the authors can clarify but the pre-2029 predictions seem to be around their median timelines. You mention AI 2027 too, but I believe Daniel Kokotajlo’s median TAI timelines were actually 2027-2028 (and then they slightly lengthened afterwards).
Unless I’m missing something, I don’t think they’re suggesting 48% unemployment by 2029. It was initially confusing for me too, but they’re using employment rate as defined (from clicking on it):
This is notably different from the complement of the unemployment rate[1]. For example, Percentage of Americans who have jobs includes people not actively searching for jobs too like stay at home parents, and the 62% (not 52%) number seems to be around the current employment rate.
Also, the authors can clarify but the pre-2029 predictions seem to be around their median timelines. You mention AI 2027 too, but I believe Daniel Kokotajlo’s median TAI timelines were actually 2027-2028 (and then they slightly lengthened afterwards).
As in, it’s not Employment Rate = (100% - Unemployment Rate)
(In addition, those timelines indeed don’t make sense, or at least so far no one has been willing to explain how they make sense.)