Economist Steve Hanke says AI won't destroy most jobs because it costs more than hiring humans

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A hot potato: A top economist has said that AI will not destroy most of the world's jobs, and his rationale seems totally logical: doing so would simply be far more expensive than employing humans. He also believes that this expense is what will prevent AI from becoming a freely available miracle machine that will remove the need for money from society, a vision espoused by Elon Musk.

Steve Hanke, a professor of applied economics at Johns Hopkins University and a former senior economist on President Ronald Reagan's Council of Economic Advisers, doesn't buy into a lot of the AI hype – both the good and the bad.

One of the biggest concerns about AI is its impact on jobs. We've already seen tens of thousands of layoffs in the last few years that came as a direct or indirect result of the technology, but Hanke told Business Insider that a complete apocalypse that leaves most people unemployed is just a fantasy for a very practical reason.