Through 2023, there will be no obvious sign that technological unemployment is happening on a large scale.
Resolved true The record shows it happened or was so.
Prediction: Statements about events outside the person's control, checked once they fell due: did they come true?
The second judge would not resolve this claim; the verdict shown is the first judge's.
What would count as true or false
Judged over 2018–2023. True: through the end of 2023 there was no obvious large-scale technological unemployment. That means aggregate unemployment in major economies (US, EU, UK, Japan) was not persistently raised by automation or AI; any rise is mainly explained by other causes such as COVID-19; and mainstream sources (BLS, OECD, IMF, mainstream economists) did not conclude that automation was causing large-scale job loss. The question remains academic debate. Mostly true: the same, but with clear, widely reported displacement in specific sectors that did not show up in aggregate figures. Mixed: credible mainstream sources were divided on whether a measurable aggregate effect had appeared. Mostly false: a significant aggregate effect was widely recognised in at least one major economy. False: mainstream data and analysis broadly agreed that automation or AI caused a large-scale rise in unemployment by 2023.
Set before the research began.
Evidence (3)
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E1 Labour Market Situation , OECD - Updated: April 2024 OECD · 17 April 2024
“OECD employment and labour force participation rates remained broadly stable at 70.1% and 73.8% in the fourth quarter of 2023, the highest levels recorded since the start of the series in 2005 and 2008, respectively.”
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E2 Artificial intelligence, job quality and inclusiveness: OECD Employment Outlook 2023 OECD · 11 July 2023
“It also takes stock of the current evidence on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the labour market.”
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E3 COVID-19 and Implications for Automation Bank of Canada · 31 May 2021
“Specifically, COVID-19 and the threat of future pandemics have the potential to speed the process of automation, as employers replace workers with robots and computers that are unaffected by disease.”
Reasoning
The OECD's April 2024 labour market release (E1) reports that in Q4 2023, employment across OECD countries was 70.1% and labour force participation was 73.8%. Both were the highest since those series began, which does not fit a large rise in unemployment driven by automation by the end of 2023. The 2023 OECD Employment Outlook (E2) says only that it reviews the current evidence on AI and the labour market, which suggests the question was still being studied rather than settled. The Bank of Canada paper (E3) puts forward a possible future speed-up in automation and does not measure any effect on overall unemployment.
Cite this claim
Scott Alexander, “Through 2023, there will be no obvious sign that technological unemployment is happening on a large scale.” (said 15 February 2018). Verdict: resolved true. Reliability API, claim c_767ffc5e1356, method 0.1.0+8bea457b, dataset release v1.1.2. https://epistacklabs.com/claims/c_767ffc5e1356
This claim is in dataset release v1.1.2, with the same verdict.
Reply to this claim
More prediction claims by Scott Alexander
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Resolved true
“There will not be a Truckpocalypse before 2023.”
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Mostly true
“Our scenario focuses on coding in particular because we think coding is what starts the intelligence explosion.”
The authors of the scenario think coding is what will start the intelligence explosion.
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“We expect that as the AI labs become more capable, they tell the government about this because they want government contracts, they want government support.”
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“In our scenario, that starts with cyber warfare, the government sees that these AIs are now as capable as the best human hackers, but can be deployed at humongous scale.”
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Resolved true
“So they become extremely interested and they discuss nationalizing the AI companies.”
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