AMERICAN ENTERPRISE INSTITUTE
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The Industry of Ideas:
Measuring How Artificial Intelligence
Changes Labor Markets
June 2023
The launch of ChatGPT has captured the world’s imag-
ination about the potential of artificial intelligence
(AI): In just its first two months, over 30 million peo-
ple used the tool, and roughly five million visited it per
day. As Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman said, “Clearly
AI is going to win. . . . How people adjust is a fascinat-
ing problem.”
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How AI will transform businesses, workers, and jobs
is not just fascinating but also a looming practical prob-
lem. ChatGPT alone could affect the jobs of 80 percent
of workers to some degree and almost 20 percent to a
large degree.
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The massive change in technology invest-
ments through targeted legislation such as the CHIPS
and Science Act
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will necessitate that American training
and education infrastructure be significantly more nim-
ble to realize the promised rewards of quality jobs.
The costly lessons of the past, including “deaths of
despair,”
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make clear that vulnerable workers displaced
by AI—or by other critical and emerging technologies—
should not be relegated to the unemployment slag heap;
rather, these workers can find work in quality jobs if the
right training opportunities are available. Firms should
be able to find the right workers to respond to changing
conditions and pay them well. American labor, educa-
tion, and training institutions must be armed with evi-
dence to respond to rapidly changing needs.
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Academic
literature
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and practical guidance will be sorely needed
to answer many practical questions.
On the demand side, those questions include:
• Which sectors of the economy are at the cutting
edge of AI?
• How are AI capabilities changing jobs?
• Does AI increase inequality or impede access to
services?
• What new career trajectories does AI create?
Julia Lane
Key Points
• Federal investments in new and emerging technologies—such as in artificial intelligence—
have transformed the labor market. New “idea industries” that don’t fit neatly into traditional
measures of industries and scientific fields have emerged.
• This report describes a new, rapidly implementable, conceptual, and empirical approach to
tracing how ideas move from investments in research to the marketplace and developing early
warning indicators of potential workforce and education impacts.
• This report proposes a new evidence-based foundation to support US national growth strate-
gies and ensure investments have the greatest chance of success for workers and employers.
