Can Two Hundred Economists Be Wrong About AI?

  

On Monday, January 13, a letter signed by over 200 economists, including several Nobel Prize winners, was released to the media.  It was entitled "We Must Act Now," which leads naturally to the question, "Act on what?"

 

The letter was admirably brief, which is probably one reason it got so many signers.  The less there is to quibble about, the more people will sign onto something.  In addition to the economists, there are a total of more than 2300 other people who signed it—everybody from students to artists and physicists. 

 

So what exactly is it that all these people agree on?  I might as well reproduce the entire thing here, as it's short enough.  Here is all the text following the title, from the official website:

 

   A Statement on AI’s Transformation of the Economy

1. AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years.
2. This could drive an unprecedented transformation of our economy, larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame. It could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as well as opportunities such as major gains in living standards.
3. Economists, policymakers and technology leaders must act now to understand the economics of transformative AI and to build the incentives, guardrails, and institutions needed to steer AI in a direction that complements humans and benefits society.

 

The actions called for are (1) understanding, and (2) building "incentives, guardrails, and institutions" to make sure that AI "complements" humans (rather than simply replacing them) and "benefits society," a mom-and-apple-pie phrase that makes an appearance in many organizational ethics codes. 

 

An article by Casey Newton on a tech-watch newsletter called The Platformer quoted one of the organizers of the letter, Erik Brynjolffson of Stanford, as saying that one of his main motivations was to call for more and better research into the effects of AI. 

 

Take employment, for example.  Has AI led to increased employment, decreased employment, spotty layoffs, or what?  Even the experts can't answer these questions very well.  The one statistic that seems to be surviving scrutiny over the last few months concerns the hiring of entry-level workers as compared to hiring more experienced workers.

 

Entry-level hiring rates have declined (2.7%, according to Newton) as hiring rates for more senior workers have increased, by and large.  Rates for mid-career (35-40) workers increased 1.6%. 

 

How much of these changes is due to AI is impossible to say, although there is anecdotal evidence that a lot of the gruntwork formerly done by young hires is now being handed off to AI by more senior employees, perhaps the very ones who dealt with the newbies before AI came along. 

 

The comparison to the Industrial Revolution is interesting, because that era led to a huge number of social as well as economic changes that are still being felt today.  It's not clear that use of AI in the workplace will be as socially disruptive, unless you count the ways AI is used in social media, in which case AI has already disrupted society, especially in the political realm and among young people.

 

Returning to the question I asked in the headline about whether 200 economists could be wrong about AI, the answer is, "Absolutely!"  Modern economics as typically practiced has a lousy track record in predicting even basic things like unemployment rates and recessions.  But gazing at crystal balls is not everything economists do.  They also gather useful data and point out significant trends to the rest of us, trends we can choose to do something about. 

 

So to the extent that economists see a crying need for more AI-related statistics, they are probably right, as they're the ones who use them the most.  The average Joe on the street is not prepared to meet this need, but AI itself can probably be used to gather data on how it's affecting the economy.

 

As to what effects AI may have on the workplace of the future, I read a useful analogy somewhere recently that made sense to me.  Steve Jobs liked to say that personal computers were bicycles for the mind.  After quoting Jobs, a writer I read recently said that if PCs are bicycles, AI is an airplane for the mind.  And after using AI frequently enough to get a feel for what it can do in my own work, I tend to agree with that analogy.

 

Bicycles and airplanes are both means of transportation, and it is important to remind ourselves that AI in its many manifestations is, in the end, more of the same kind of thing we got when computers came along.  It is not a new life form, it does not have ethical standing on its own, and it will not develop consciousness or a conscience as we understand these terms.  If it fulfills the hopes of many of its designers, it will vastly increase the productivity of what George Gill calls "symbolic manipulators"—programmers first, but also writers of all kinds, academics, lawyers, and even politicians.  But making productivity of politicians better may turn out to be AI's final frontier. 

 

So far, it doesn't look like any particular job category is slated for massive layoffs due simply to the introduction of AI.  That may change in the future if AI is successfully coupled to affordable, effective, and above all safe robots.  Robot garbage collectors, hazardous-equipment operators, and military personnel becoming a reality could have widespread negative effects, not only on the job market but on the nature of the enterprises touched by their work. 

 

But until that happens, the best thing to do about AI seems to be what the doctors call "watchful waiting."  If we pick up any signs that AI is unfairly penalizing a particular line of work, or is causing toxic effects such as the teenage social-media-caused epidemic of depression and anxiety in new areas, it's time to do something about it.  Applying draconian precautionary actions such as a wholesale shutdown of AI research seems not to be in the cards, as it would be nearly impossible to apply anyway.

 

Let's hope those who are qualified to respond to the call for more AI-related economic data step up and do so, and hope that the rest of us can benefit from what they find out, and take action if

necessary.  But so far, panic is not advised.

 

Sources:  The statement "We Must Act Now" and its signatures can be viewed directly at tps://www.wemustactnow.ai/.  Casey Newton's article "The loudest warning about AI and jobs yet" can be viewed at https://www.platformer.news/ai-jobs-warning-brynjolfsson-acemoglu/. 

 

More Facts in the COVID-19 Origin Controversy

  

By now, the COVID-19 pandemic is mostly an unpleasant memory in the minds of those old enough to remember it, except for those suffering from long COVID, those who lost loved ones or knew someone who died in it, or . . . well, maybe it's not just a memory after all.  Whatever your personal experience of it was, there is no question that it was one of the biggest tragedies of the 21st century so far.  And one of the more disturbing aspects of it is that we still don't know exactly how it started.

 

Some disasters can be traced down to the exact time and place of origin—for example, the Great Chicago Fire of of 1871, which began around 8:30 PM on October 8 in or around a barn at 137 W. DeKoven Street.  It is agreed by all interested parties that the COVID pandemic originated in the city of Wuhan, but beyond that the story gets cloudy.

 

Soon after the virus spread worldwide, two main theories of its origin emerged.  One, heavily promoted by the government of China, asserted that it was a zoonotic disease which jumped from its original host animal to people after undergoing mutations making it able to infect humans.  As Wuhan hosted extensive live-animal food markets, this theory was plausible.  The other theory was that experiments or research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had led to a lab leak of a deliberately enhanced virus. 

 

Despite some co-operation from the Wuhan authorities in an investigation by the World Health Organization in early 2021, no definitive evidence has ever emerged that allows a Chicago-Fire-style reconstruction of exactly how the virus got its start in human beings.  And it's possible that no such evidence may exist, or if it still exists, it may never be found. 

 

The Summer 2026 issue of The New Atlantis carries some additional circumstantial evidence that may form important pieces of the puzzle if it is ever solved.  Dan Silver spent the years 2003 to 2023 as a "rapporteur" (basically, an investigator charged by an official body to do a specific investigation) with the international Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases.  So his full-time job was to look into the origins of SARS, COVID, and similar epidemics, and he learned a lot about obscure sources of information in his work.

 

One of those obscure sources concerns the waste-disposal facilities in and around Wuhan that the Wuhan Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the separate Wuhan Institute of Virology used to dispose of biological hazardous waste.  Normally there were three such facilities.  But Silver has found in public records that in May of 2019, two of the three facilities that normally processed hazardous waste from both organizations were disabled and shut down by fires.  That left only one operational, and it was 190 miles away.

 

In addition, the Wuhan CDC admits publicly that for twenty-five years, it had been accumulating waste products on site, in violation of a Chinese law that says no hazardous waste may be stored for more than a year after it is created.  By the winter of 2019, all this waste had been cleared away in a move to a new facility in Wuhan. 

 

Putting the pieces together, Silver says that by implication, twenty-five years' worth of possibly biological hazardous waste was moved 190 miles from Wuhan to the one remaining hazardous-waste facility some time between the summer and winter of 2019, when the Wuhan CDC completed its move to its new facility.  And it was in the fall of 2019 that the earliest cases of what came to be known as COVID-19 appeared. 

 

While not exactly a smoking gun, these facts at a minimum indicate that the general level of caution regarding such waste was way below what was warranted by the potentially dangerous materials being handled.  A third variation of the two theories mentioned above is the following. 

 

While the Wuhan Institute of Virology was developing "gain-of-function" virus materials (not necessarily complete viruses), they were also famous for collecting viruses in the wild under less than safe conditions.  It's entirely possible that while no engineered virus escaped the lab, some piece of material from their wide-ranging investigations of bat viruses from different regions of China was carelessly disposed of, possibly because of the waste-material disruptions that began the previous summer.  And that material might have been the first to infect a human being with COVID. 

 

This third possibility combines features of the first two.  It allows the virus to have originated by natural and not engineered means, but it also places one of the Wuhan organizations (either the CDC or more likely the Institute of Virology, which performed the collecting) at the center of the process, as a concentrator of naturally hazardous material in a populous area.

 

Again, unless more new data is unearthed by diligent investigators such as Silver, the world may never know the precise way that the COVID-19 virus began its world tour of death and destruction.  Silver reports that China has significantly tightened its enforcement of regulations regarding biological waste and hazards since then, which is a good thing.  Nobody wants a repeat of the COVID epidemic, least of all China, which suffered an extent of damage that is still being revealed. 

 

While we may never know how the virus first spread to humans, we know how to prevent such spread of potentially dangerous viruses in terms of good laboratory techniques and institutional discipline.  Countless disasters of all kinds are caused by what can only be termed sloppiness, whether by an individual or an organization.  When researchers deal with dangerous stuff, they are honor-bound to take all reasonable precautions to protect themselves and the society hosting them.  This doesn't always happen, and human carelessness may in fact be a significant cause of the COVID pandemic.  Regardless of the exact origin, the experience is a constant reminder that little mistakes in certain critical activities can have literally worldwide consequences.

 

Sources:  Dan Silver's article "A New Piece of the Puzzle of Covid's Origin" appeared on pp. 67-72 of the Summer 2026 issue of The New Atlantis.  I also referred to an editorial by Jin-Hong Yoo of the College of Medicine of the Catholic University of Korea at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC12040609/. 

Bearing the Responsibility: Update on the UPS Crash in Louisville

  

Around 5:15 PM Tuesday afternoon, Nov. 4, 2025, an MD-11 cargo plane operated by UPS began rolling down the runway of Muhammed Ali International Airport in Louisville, Kentucky.  Flight 2976 was on a routine flight bound for Hawaii, but as the pilot rotated the plane to get it into the air, the left engine separated from the fuselage.  The resulting crash and fire killed all three crew members and twelve people on the ground. 

 

Since then, National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) personnel have been investigating the crash.  After two days of hearings last May, the NTSB released a set of documents last Wednesday that reveal new details about why the engine fell off.

 

The structure that connects the engine to the underside of the wing is called a pylon, an elongated assembly that attaches to the wing at two points, one near the structure's center and one on its rear end.  The rear attachment point hangs from a wing structure called a clevis.  The thing that actually connects the wing's clevis to the pylon is an assembly called a spherical bearing.  It's rather like a ball-and-socket joint in the human hip, and allows restricted angular movements that the dynamics of flight make necessary.  But it also carries a large portion of both the static weight of the engine and the dynamic loads when the plane takes off.

 

Surrounding the ball is the socket part called a race.  The race is held to the pylon with a couple of brackets called lugs, a forward and an aft lug.  The lugs are shaped like my grandmother's old mantle clock:  a circular middle part tapering to a flat surface on either side at the bottom, where the lugs attach to the pylon. 

 

Back in 2011, Boeing discovered that metal fatigue exacerbated by a "design recess groove" in the spherical bearing had led to the bearing race cracking in two, like the two layers of a layer cake coming apart.  This had happened on several airplanes already, and while Boeing issued a service letter noting that this was a problem and telling aircraft maintenance personnel how to check for it, there was nothing in the letter implying that such a failure could cause the engine to separate from the wing. 

 

In the May hearings, both Boeing and the FAA admitted that they didn't realize the seriousness of the race cracking, which put extra stress on the lugs that they were not designed to carry.  When the lugs surrounding the bearing let go, probably during the maximum stress of takeoff that would exert extreme downward tension on the mount, the engine was left hanging by only the center mount, which also eventually gave way, possibly because of the fire caused by ruptured fuel lines.  Once the engine left the plane, the situation was hopeless.

 

Why wasn't the MD-11 inspected for this problem in time to catch it and fix it?  An AP report says that several years earlier, Boeing asked the FAA for permission to relax a schedule of major required inspections from every 19,900 cycles of takeoffs and landings to every 29,260 cycles.  The MD-11 that crashed had 21,043 cycles, so it would have been inspected under the old more rigorous schedule.  Inspecting the spherical bearing is not an easy task, and usually the engine has to be removed to gain access to it.  So the problem couldn't have been caught with more frequent minor inspections.

 

And even if it had, neither Boeing nor the FAA believed the bearing-race failure would lead to lug failure and loss of the engine.  Maintenance on the aircraft was performed by STE San Antonio Aerospace, which followed the maintenance procedures required by the FAA-approved schedule.  Unfortunately, that schedule wasn't sufficient to catch the problem in time.

 

Any time a fatal accident occurs and engineering is involved, the public wants to know the cause.  And in rare cases, such a single-point failure that no one expected can be found.  But in most cases, the chain of events leading up to the major accident is complicated.  And usually precursors to it can be found:  warning signs that, while not causing serious harm in themselves, can serve to alert those who are paying attention to a potential major problem that needs to be addressed before it gets out of hand.

 

That is what seems to have happened in the case of UPS Flight 2976.  A faulty design including the recess groove (1) led to bearing-race failures (2) which were discovered but not taken seriously enough by either Boeing (3) or the FAA (4).  After the service note alerted maintenance organizations to the problem, three more planes were found with cracked bearings, although none of them crashed.  This fact probably encouraged a degree of complacency which in retrospect was unwarranted.

 

Following the crash, all MD-11s were grounded until they could have their spherical bearings inspected.  They are now required to be checked after every 4,000 cycles of takeoffs and landings, but UPS has announced that they are retiring their fleet of MD-11s early in any case.

 

The NTSB is not finished with its investigation, which might take until the end of the year to complete.  It must be a rather thankless task to pick through the huge pile of wreckage reassembled in some hangar in order to figure out what happened.  But such jobs are necessary as long as lives depend on the smooth functioning of the incredibly complicated systems that we rely on for transportation and communication. 

 

Engineering requires tradeoffs:  tradeoffs between economy and increased frequency of maintenance schedules, tradeoffs about inexpensive designs that might not last as long as more costly ones, and on ad infinitum.  The responsibility for missing the critical inspections and repairs that might have averted the crash last November appears to be spread among the four parties of Boeing, the FAA, UPS, and STE San Antonio Aerospace.  Any one of these could have gone the extra distance of doing extra inspections to avert the crash, but no one seemed to know how serious the bearing problem was.

 

Unfortunately, experience is sometimes the best teacher in engineering as in other fields.  And the results of this investigation will probably lead to increased inspections of the kinds of engine mounts that failed.  And that will be a small victory in the never-ending battle to keep minor problems from turning into major ones.

 

Sources:  I referred to an article in the Fresno Business Journal at https://thebusinessjournal.com/ups-cargo-plane-crash-investigation-maintenance-failures/, a more technical article at

https://theaircurrent.com/feed/dispatches/ups-boeing-md-11-ntsb-update-engine-mount/, and the NTSB preliminary report at https://www.ntsb.gov/investigations/Documents/DCA26MA024%20Investigative%20Update.pdf, as well as the Wikipedia article "UPS Airlines Flight 2976."