But this is not to say that AI will necessarily have only positive effects on labor markets. Recent work by the Council of Economic Advisers (CEA), shows that lower-paying jobs are at much greater risk than those that pay handsomely. Eighty-three percent of jobs making less than $20 per hour are projected to come under pressure from automation, as compared to 31 percent of jobs making between $20 and $40 per hour, and just 4 percent of jobs making above $40 per hour, as the graph below illustrates.

Of course, advanced economies have seen vast amounts of innovation in the last three centuries without rendering human labor obsolete. Most of the types of jobs that existed in the 1700s do not exist today, but new types of jobs that no one could have imagined then have taken their place—all because of technological advances. A different trajectory is unlikely to emerge this time around because even though AI has the potential to replace certain human tasks, it will likely also create entirely new fields of jobs.

So 83 percent of the jobs making less than $20 per hour will not simply disappear. But it does mean that during a transition period low-wage jobs could face substantial downward pressure on their wages to remain viable in the face of competition from technological substitutes.

This change is coming at a time when existing trends in the economy present cause for concern. Over the past 60 years, the labor-force participation rate for “prime-age” men—the fraction of those between the ages of 25 and 54 who have a job or are actively looking for one—has declined steadily, from a high of 98 percent in the 1950s to 88 percent today. This raises concerns not only because workers’ productivity peaks during these ages but also because a large body of research has linked joblessness with a host of negative socioeconomic outcomes. (It should be noted that I am looking at men’s history as a guide to the potential outlook for both men and women in the future; the history of women’s employment is dominated by the one-time event of the massive entry into the workforce in the decades following World War II.)

The decline in prime-age male labor-force participation has been concentrated among men with a high-school degree or less and has also coincided with a decrease in their relative wages. CEA analysis suggests that rather than a supply-side effect—that these men just don’t want to work—the erosion in labor-force participation is likely driven by lackluster labor demand, resulting in both fewer employment opportunities and lower wages.

In all likelihood, while AI will not replace all human labor, there will be a period of transition that disproportionately affects these low-skilled workers. This period of turnover, in which workers displaced by new technology find new employment (often in jobs made possible by those very technologies), may last for years and can lead to a combination of lower wages (i.e. inequality) and extended periods of joblessness.