White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Christopher Phelan says the data doesn’t support fears that artificial intelligence is wiping out jobs — and in fact shows the opposite.
Speaking with Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle during a “State of the Economy” policy discussion, Phelan said companies that use AI more heavily are hiring more workers, not fewer, contradicting the narrative that the technology is a job killer.
“So we do not see in the data that companies that use AI more are laying—are having fewer workers. In fact it’s the opposite. Hiring companies that use AI more are hiring more than companies that use AI less,” Phelan said.
Asked why President Donald Trump has made AI a focal point of his economic agenda, Phelan placed the technology in the long arc of American economic history, comparing it to past leaps that freed workers from one kind of labor and opened the door to another.
“In my opinion, AI is another transformative technology in a world history where we have seen transformative technologies before. I mentioned earlier in this interview, 80% of the people used to work on farms. That’s because that’s what it took, so that we had enough calories not to die.”
Phelan noted that mechanization of farming and manufacturing didn’t end in mass, permanent unemployment — it freed workers to do other work entirely.
“So I see AI as — and it has not been the end of the world that we were able to have machines to help with farming, or machines to help with manufacturing. We have not seen now some jobs get replaced. There used to be people who, when you made a phone call from one place to another, somebody had to physically pull out a plug, move it to another slot, and put it somewhere else.”
“Those people were then able to move to something else that gives us, again, the standard of living that we have,” Phelan added.
He was clear that he sees AI as a tool that works alongside American workers, not a replacement for them.
“I do see it as potentially transformative, like many previous transformative technologies. But I don’t see it as substituting people. I see it as another tool that complements people.”
Phelan’s remarks come as the administration continues to promote AI development as central to its economic strategy, pushing back against warnings from critics who argue the technology threatens widespread job losses across white-collar and manual labor sectors alike.
