The same paper's authors are forecasting real effects within three years.
“A new NBER survey of nearly 6,000 senior executives (US, UK, Germany, Australia), fielded Nov 2025-Jan 2026, found more than 90% report no effect of AI use on their own firm's employment over the past three years, and 89% report no effect on labor productivity (measured as sales per employee).”
NBER working paper 'Firm Data on AI' (w34836) - Ivan Yotzov, Jose Maria Barrero, Nicholas Bloom, Philip Bunn, Steven J. Davis, Kevin M. Foster, Aaron Jalca, Brent H. Meyer, Paul Mizen, Michael A. Navarrete, Pawel Smietanka, Gregory Thwaites, Ben Zhe Wang, 28 August 2026
Recorded 5 September 2026. Our ruling means: literally true, materially misleading.
More than 90 percent of executives report no effect of AI use on employment over the past three years, and 89 percent report no impact on labor productivity.
They forecast that over the next three years, AI will increase labor productivity by 1.4 percent on average while reducing employment by 0.7 percent, implying a net output gain of roughly 0.8 percent.
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Don't take the AI industry's word for it.
“AI is dramatically accelerating AI research at Anthropic right now, roughly doubling the pace of capabilities progress.”
TRUE, BUTLab Not FieldAjeya Cotra on Planned Obsolescence, reading METR's assessment and Anthropic's S-1 statement that it may imminently meet its own threshold
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