Nobel Prize-winning economist says fear of AI jobs will produce negative results
FOX Business host Charles Payne discusses the market shift driven by artificial intelligence in Money Making.
A Nobel Prize-winning economist has warned that further predictions of artificial intelligence destroying the job market may be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Robert Shiller, who shared the 2013 Nobel Prize in economics for his work on pricing, wrote a guest article Monday in The New York Times arguing that panic over AI is not a new social phenomenon.
In fact, he wrote, people have been worried that new technology might take their place since the days of Aristotle, who envisioned a self-driving string loom and a harp that could play music without breaking the strings.
And in the 19th century, a group of English textile workers – later known as the Luddites – deliberately destroyed machinery they believed would put them out of work.
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Professor Robert J. Shiller receives the Nobel Prize in economics during an awards ceremony on Dec. 10, 2013, Stockholm, Sweden. (Pascal Le Segretain / Getty Images)
Shiller fears that the same anxieties found in us are resurfacing.
He cited a Quinnipiac survey from March, which found that 70% of people believe AI will reduce the number of jobs. Additionally, only 16% of Americans believe that AI will have a positive impact on society in the next two decades, according to a Pew Research survey conducted in June.
“Like many others, I believe that AI can reduce work. But unlike many, I do not really blame the technology itself. Rather, I worry about the power of fear it produces,” Shiller wrote.
“Our minds are wired to respond to news. The stories that circulate in society can affect individual economic decisions,” he continued. “When millions of people make millions and millions of decisions based on negative expectations, there is a danger that fear can help to be born into reality.”
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Robert Shiller attends the 2019 Forbes 30 Under 30 Conference at the Detroit Masonic Temple on Oct. 29, 2019, in Detroit, Michigan. (Taylor Hill / Getty Images)
Much of the negative media coverage surrounding AI has focused on speculation about how it will affect jobs and the economy.
In late May, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told Axios that in the next one to five years, AI could eliminate half of all white-collar jobs and raise unemployment to 20%. He later expressed uncertainty about the exact timeline.
The current unemployment rate is 4.3%, up from 4% at the start of President Donald Trump’s term in January 2025.
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“While the job market is slowing for a number of reasons, there are reports that fear of an AI apocalypse is increasing the rate of layoffs and causing a drop in consumer sentiment,” Shiller said.
CloudHQ data center in Ashburn, Virginia, on May 31, 2026. (Photos by Lexi Critchett/Bloomberg/Getty)
Shiller pointed out that tech leaders like Amodei, who promote the doom and gloom scenarios their companies can help visualize, are somewhat short-sighted and must be strengthened to prevent economic collapse.
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“Perhaps the best thing we can do is appeal directly to the Silicon Valley leaders who have been promoting this bad news with such force,” Shiller wrote.
He continued: “Certainly media attention highlighting how dangerously powerful your AI model is may help you sell more, but it may be more difficult to do so in a recession. Try not to forget the critical lessons of our past.”
