Clive Crook, Columnist

Humans Can Decide Whether AI Kills or Creates Jobs

March 31, 2026 at 10:00 AM UTC

Clive Crook is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist and member of the editorial board covering economics. Previously, he was deputy editor of the Economist and chief Washington commentator for the Financial Times.

What happens with AI depends on human choices.
Photographer: Adek Berry/AFP/Getty Images

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Does artificial intelligence herald soaring prosperity or mass unemployment, political breakdown and Orwellian subjection? Nobody, not even AI, can honestly say. Forced to guess, I’d predict some of both. The point is, the outcome isn’t predetermined. What happens depends on choices that we humans (for the moment) will be making.

Economists grappling with this issue inevitably come back to the same core question: Will AI complement labor or substitute for it? The first implies strong and steady demand for labor together with rising wages; the second might mean structural unemployment, stagnant wages, higher returns to capital and worsening inequality.