AI could create a 'Mad Max' scenario where everyone's skills are basically worthless, a top economist says

Business Insider

6 hours ago

As AI reshapes the labor market, the real threat may not be unemployment — it could be something subtler and more corrosive: the collapse in what skills are worth.
That's according to MIT economist David Autor, who made the comments in an interview released Wednesday on the "Possible" podcast, hosted by LinkedIn cofounder Reed Hoffman.
Autor warned that rapid automation could usher in what he calls a "Mad Max" scenario — a world where jobs still exist, but the skills that once generated wages become cheap and commoditized.
"The more likely scenario to me looks much more like Mad Max: Fury Road, where everybody is competing over a few remaining resources that aren't controlled by some warlord somewhere," he said.
The reference, drawn from the dystopian film series set in a post-collapse world of scarcity and inequality, captures Autor's fear that AI could concentrate wealth and power at the top while leaving most workers to fight over what's left.
While several economists and some tech CEOs worry AI could displace millions of workers, Autor argued that the damage may play out differently, through the devaluation of once-valuable skills.
"The threat that rapid automation poses — to the degree it poses as a threat — is not running out of work, but making the valuable skills that people have highly abundant so they're no longer valuable," he said.
He pointed to roles like touch typists, factory technicians, and even taxi drivers as examples — all skilled, well-paying jobs that technology has downgraded or, in some cases, replaced.
"It used to be that touch typing was a very valuable skill. Not so much anymore," he said.
This doesn't mean people will be unemployed, he added. Instead, many are likely to shift into lower-paid service jobs — in food service, cleaning, security — that require little training and offer minimal pay.
"Automation can either increase the expertise of your work by eliminating the supporting tasks and allowing you to focus on what you're really good at," he said.
"Or, it can descale your work by automating the expert parts and just leaving you with a sort of last mile."
Autor's concern is increasingly reflected in the corporate world.
A May Salesforce study projected that 23% of workers will be redeployed over the next two years as AI adoption surges, and even employees who stay in their current roles will see them evolve.
Tech executives, meanwhile, are placing a growing premium on adaptability, creativity, and the ability to work with AI tools, not just technical specialization.
To avoid a future where technology widens inequality, Autor said we must intentionally design AI to support workers.
"As my friend Josh Cohen, a philosopher, likes to say, 'The future is not a forecasting exercise — it's a design exercise, you're building it.'"
"And so, breaking our way is not just a matter of luck. It's a matter of making good collective choices, and that's extremely hard to do."
For Autor, the best place to start is by focusing AI where it can do the most good: expanding access to healthcare, education, and meaningful work.
"Healthcare and education — two activities that in the United States has 20% GDP, a lot of it public money, actually — this is where there's such a great opportunity where AI could be a tool that could be so helpful to us in a way that other tools have not been."
"Many of these things are feasible," he continued. "If we think we're not going to do them, it's not because we couldn't do them. It's because we're somehow not delivering on what is feasible."