Quartz: “In a recent study (pdf), economists Daren Acemoglu of MIT and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University try to quantify how worried we should be about robots. They examine the impact of industrial automation on the US labor market from 1990 to 2007. They conclude that each additional robot reduced employment in a given commuting area by 3-6 workers, and lowered overall wages by 0.25-0.5%.”
“In order to isolate the effect of robots, Acemoglu and Restrepo used a clever statistical trick. They collected data on adoption rates of industrial robots in Europe, and then analyzed what happened to American labor markets by comparing industry trends with their equivalents in Europe. This isolated the changes likely caused by the spread of robots, and not some other factor peculiar to the US.”
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