Giving Compass' Take:

• In this piece from the American Enterprise Institute, James Pethokoukis interviews NYU business professor Robert Seamans about what he expects the effect of articial intelligence to be on the economy and labor market.

• Is Seaman's techno-optimism realistic, or is it wishful thinking?

• To learn about how mobile, social, and cloud technology will likely influence artificial intelligence, click here.

Will artificial intelligence (AI) lead to a jobless economy? Can AI stimulate lasting economic growth? Is anti-competitive behavior by big tech slowing the rate of AI innovation?  On this episode, Professor Robert Seamans discusses AI’s impact on the economy, how it will change the nature of work, and whether regulation is needed to keep the AI industry competitive.

Robert Seamans is an associate professor at New York University’s Stern School of Business and a former Senior Economist at the White House Council of Economic Advisors. Most recently, he coauthored the chapter “AI and the Economy” with Jason Furman.

PETHOKOUKIS: Are you a techno-optimist? If so, could you give me the techno-optimist’s case?

SEAMANS: I am a techno-optimist. I get bummed out when I hear many of the stories about robots taking jobs, AI taking jobs, when I hear a lot of pessimism about the effect that AI will have on the economy. I’m pretty optimistic about the positive effects it will have in terms of growth, and we can get into that. I’m fairly positive about the effects it will have on jobs. I think a lot of the stories are about substitution. I think substitution, AI substituting for human labor is actually much more difficult, much harder than people realize. In fact, I think there’s actually a really good case to be made that there are going to be a lot of complementarities. Again, I’m happy to get into all of that, but the short answer is I’m a techno-optimist.

Read the lightly editted transcript of the episode about artificial intelligence by James Pethokoukis at AEI.