I write/research about technology & society, past, present & future. Latest book: The New Goliaths. Technology & automation in the past, Learning by Doing.
Harpswell, Maine
Joined April 2013
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AI is NOT killing the software developer. AI is taking over tasks that software developers perform, but that does not translate into lost jobs. A new report shows why: AI is creating new and improved software products that raise demand. sites.bu.edu/tpri/files/2026…
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James Bessen retweeted
On "the real white collar labor market disruption due to AI will happen after the next recession":
1/ I often see folks argue that a lot of latent/potential automation will kick in after the next recession. Companies will lay off workers during the downturn, then not rehire them
James Bessen retweeted
About time. Standardized protocols are the road back to user empowerment > platform empowerment.
Today we’re announcing Personal Agent Protocol — an open standard @Meta and @SierraPlatform are developing along with industry partners at @Genesys, @instinct, @RocketOTD, @Shopify, @stripe, and @Walmart. It will help define how personal agents interact with businesses and is open for anyone to implement. You can read more here - and if anyone is interested in joining let me know! sierra.ai/blog/introducing-p…
James Bessen retweeted
Super interesting CES paper on AI exposure versus actual adoption at the firm level.
"Exposure is positively and statistically significantly associated with adoption, but explains only a modest share of its variation."
www2.census.gov/library/work…
James Bessen retweeted
To justify today's AI capex, we'll have to spend 9% of GDP on AI services, a study finds. Is it plausible we'll spend as much on AI as on food? Twice as much as on energy? The law of diminishing returns would like a word. My column: wsj.com/tech/ai/will-america…
James Bessen retweeted
Here's an article making a good case for the AI boom turning into a crash in the next two years. It's the first such article that I find at all plausible-- it has none of the usual leftist mood affiliation and "AI is a fraud" absurdities that I've come to expect from such articles. It simply argues that the AI companies have committed to purchasing the compute from a lot of new data centers starting next year, and that the amount of this may far exceed their revenues. The companies will have to depend on people being willing to continue investing in them during 2027-2028. This applies a lot to OpenAI, and less so to Anthropic. It's a good article, and sobering.
groundbrkr.com/p/the-teaser-…
James Bessen retweeted
"AI agents are increasingly being used to search, compare and book travel. But employment in travel agencies has been steady at around 75,000 since early 2023, another data point suggesting AI-driven labor market disruption is still not visible in the hard data." @apolloglobal
James Bessen retweeted
Fwiw my big picture takeaway from this isn’t “AI won’t affect the labor market” or “software developer employment is immune to AI” but rather that you should:
(1) be intensely skeptical of high confidence predictions
(2) discount predictions of near-term radical change
James Bessen retweeted
Also, this work was inspired by @JamesBessen , who does top notch research on the impact of technological research on the labor force
James Bessen retweeted
wanted to better understand how much AI-authored code was making its way into critical open source projects.
with the caveat that it's incredibly difficult to detect, the answer seems to be: not a lot. yet.
redmonk.com/sogrady/2026/07/…
James Bessen retweeted
There's been a meaningful pickup in software developer employment over the past year or two.
If you're going to use AI to write software, it's a good idea to put it in the hands of someone who knows what they're doing...
(h/t @JamesBessen )
James Bessen retweeted
I did this for financial services yesterday, here's the same thing for information services, where people often attribute the employment decline to AI.
The correlation within the sector runs contrary to that story: the higher AI adoption is, the smaller the job losses.
James Bessen retweeted
Job losses in finance are happening where AI adoption is lowest; job growth is strongest where AI adoption is highest.
James Bessen retweeted
Ethan was wrong. At the time, industry employment was approximately 900K. Ethan thought that would drop to 450K by today. Instead today industry employment is about 1.8M
That’s right, instead of half, the industry doubled.
AI appears to be ACCELERATING the GROWTH in software developers. New record employment in May (source BLS CPS). 1/2
Why? AI increases the productivity of developers so that they can do more, so firms want more of them. See sites.bu.edu/tpri/files/2026…
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James Bessen retweeted
Running uncorroborated claims on Platner from an ex-girlfriend who is a professional Republican operative is outrageous from the New York Times. It's consistent with their biased treatment of candidates skeptical of Israel.
James Bessen retweeted
Very nice piece on the limitations of the AI exposure measures. Important we don't get out over our skis when using them.
The point at the end about occupation-specific analyses is a good one, "One thing missing in the focus on aggregate indicators is a less satisfying but more useful approach: careful, occupation-specific work."
I would add industry specific studies as well, like @JamesBessen on textiles, steel, and autos.
Even so, there are lots of things we can do within the federal statistical system to improve AI measurement. I'll have more on that coming soon.
James Bessen retweeted
Some news: This week I am starting at @GoogleDeepMind as Director of AGI Economics on @shanelegg’s team. I will be joining the other amazing cross-disciplinary scientists researching AGI there.
My team will study how frontier AI could reshape the economy: what happens to work and labor, how wealth and power are distributed, how institutions adapt, how AI agents shape markets, and what kinds of models can help us reason clearly about futures that may look very different from the past. I’m incredibly excited to help build this research agenda.
If AGI changes how society operates, economics is going to be critical for shaping our shared future. Many more announcements soon.
James Bessen retweeted
A lot of analysis (including some from BL!) has used the exposure metrics to look at tracking possible labor market impacts from AI. But one* issue with the exposure metrics (as Zanna Iscenko and Fabien Curto Millet have discussed) is that exposed occupations !=unexposed. SO 1/
The introduction and adoption of powerful new AI tools has many wondering if the labor market has already - or will soon - be affected in a big way. Prior Budget Lab analysis + a regularly updated tracker haven't yet found such effects. But these are early days and it's important to explore new methods for monitoring the labor market.
Today the @The_Budget_Lab has a new analysis of AI effects on the labor market that does exactly this. Read full report here: budgetlab.yale.edu/research/…
