Forget rows about interest rates — we should watch out for AI
While the president concentrates on defenestrating bureaucrats who report fewer jobs than he believes exist, and the chairman of the Fed ponders the significance of 'cracks' in the labour market, artificial intelligence is making those concerns pale into insignificance.
Morgan Stanley estimates that these large models that are equipping machines to perform tasks typically associated with human intelligence will gobble $3 trillion of capital in the next three years. It is the double-digit unemployment gorilla sitting in congressional hearing rooms, in the Fed board room and at the dining table at Mar-a-Lago.
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, a powerful creator of AI systems, estimates that AI will wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs in the next one to five years, and drive the unemployment rate to as high as 20 per cent. Indeed, even now, recent college graduates — unemployment rate 6.5 per cent — are complaining of extreme difficulties in finding jobs.
McKinsey, the management consultancy, reckons that AI could automate 30 per cent of hours currently worked across the US economy by 2030, and that 60 per cent will be significantly altered by AI tools. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon says: 'AI is everywhere … it hedges our equity portfolios … there's nothing it's not going to touch.' Gone will be bank tellers, data entry clerks, administrative assistants and executive secretaries.
More optimistic observers point out that when Henry Ford reduced the horse from a major means of transportation to dressage, starring roles in cowboy movies, and polo, consumers wanted, then needed cars — and more than one — creating millions of jobs for auto workers and mechanics. When Thomas Alva Edison created the light bulb he relegated candlemakers to making scented gifts, while creating jobs for manufacturers of those bulbs and enabled students to engage in myriad night time activities, including, but not limited to, studying. When Steve Jobs created the iPhone and thin Macs, he replaced latter-day Bob Cratchits with spread sheets, and AT&T repairmen with programmers and manufacturers of computers, carrying cases, ergonomic chairs. The supply of each invention created its own demand, along with the burning desire for their add-ons. Apple AirPods, anyone?
We do not yet know whether the beneficent effects of this new force will be outweighed by its ability to seize control of its creators. But the speed with which AI is penetrating almost every phase of economic life, and uncertainty about just what products it will create or make newly affordable for consumers, make it unwise to mumble something about the historic fecklessness of Luddites and do nothing. The potential transition costs will be too high, the potential strains on society and the pressures on politicians too great for a policy of benign neglect.
Imagine this: in the morning strange metal objects directed by AI 'agents', software systems capable of planning and reasoning, are directing machines, usually robots, that are mowing your lawn and cleaning your pool. An AI agent-directed drone has deposited the book you ordered on your doorstep after an AI-directed robot selected it from the bottom of a pile in a huge warehouse. You enter an AI- directed driverless car that delivers you to your golf club while you adjust the Metaglasses that have replaced iPhones and read news reports written by an AI agent specially for you, based on your recent purchases, travels, conversations at home and other personal data sprinkled by you across the internet. No waiting for a sci-fi future; it has arrived. The question, where have all the workers gone? The answer, AI agents have replaced them, every one.
Some experts, including Jamie Dimon, believe the past is prologue: AI will create more jobs than it will destroy, proving John Maynard Keynes right again when he wrote almost 100 years ago, that 'technological unemployment … is only a temporary phase of maladjustment.' Possible. But even so, there will be high transition costs for which policies must be thought through before the full blast of AI makes itself felt.
Government budgets already under strain will make it difficult to supplement the incomes of displaced workers, at a time when an ageing population places greater demand on the existing social safety net. Past efforts at retraining programmes have largely failed, and must be reshaped. Taxes will be needed to transfer some of the benefits of AI to the adversely affected. But without destroying incentives to retrain and find work, as would a universal basic income — no work required — being mooted by some guilt-ridden Silicon Valley magnates.
Add measures that provide incentives to accelerate the development of new products and the consequent new jobs for humans, and the higher incomes capable of financing the amelioration of the costs of change. Make fast write-offs of research and development costs and investment a permanent feature of the tax code.
I leave the question of regulating scams, abuses, of what Amodei calls 'extreme blackmail behaviour' and robots that are capable of assassinating their creators to others.
irwin@irwinstelzer.com
Irwin Stelzer is a business adviser
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Memory foam tends to trap heat, so we were keen to see if the SmartCool cover could offset this. We used a heat pad, a thermocouple and our bottoms to measure how efficiently the surface cooled down, and we also took the temperature of the foam beneath. We then deployed weights and wobbly cups of water to measure factors such as sinkage, motion isolation and edge support. Our family testing panel came over to score the mattress out of 10 on firmness, breathability and comfort. I prefer to sleep-test mattresses for much longer than a week because even the firmest cushioning materials soften over time. The Simba and Panda Hybrid Bamboo felt significantly softer after a couple of months. The Tempur was soft from the start, though, and Alan and I found it too cushioned for comfort. After a week of poor sleep, we gave it to my dad, Don, 85, to see if its pressure relief might help soothe the joint pain he's been suffering in his hip and shoulder (more on which below). He returned it to us for a second leg of sleep testing once temperatures had cooled down in late July. Tempur, founded in the US in 1992, was among the first brands to make mattresses from viscoelastic polyurethane foam. 'Memory foam' is how you know this stuff, but Tempur calls it 'Tempur Material' and uses its own proprietary formulas that cover a range of densities. Memory foam moulds to your body and doesn't spring back quickly when pressed. It feels quite different from the simple seat-cushion polyfoam used in many sprung mattresses under the sleep surface (in the Ikea Valevåg, for example). It's also more expensive. And so, as with many mattresses that contain high proportions of memory foam, Tempur mattresses are expensive. The Pro Plus SmartCool sits in the middle of Tempur's range, costing from £1,499 for a 21cm-deep single to £4,299 for a 30cm-deep 200 x 200cm ('special size'). The 25cm-deep double I tested costs from £2,299, almost twice the price of the Simba, the next most expensive mattress in the Filter's roundup. The medium SmartCool has four layers of foam, of varying densities: a 5cm upper layer of soft, elastic memory foam for cushioning and pressure relief; then 5cm of adaptive foam; and then 3cm of even denser supportive foam. Finally, the 12cm 'DuraBase' layer of even denser foam provides support and durability. Everyone on my panel rated it 5/10 on the soft-firm scale, so the 'medium' description is accurate. The sleeping surface sank a generous 4.2cm under 7.5kg of hand weights. That's well cushioned, but only marginally more than the Eve Wunderflip Hybrid, which sank 4cm and is described as medium-firm. Tempur doesn't say how the SmartCool's 'QuickRefresh' polyester fabric cover dissipates heat; it simply cites 'cool-to-the-touch' technology. The cover unzips easily with its stylish green handles, and it can be washed at 40C. You can also unzip and wash the base cover. Trying to wash or sponge the mattress inside, however, will invalidate your guarantee. The double-size mattress weighs a chunky 40kg, a few kilos more than the Otty or the Simba, but much less than the 65kg Millbrook Wool Luxury 4000. The Tempur's weight and floppiness – plus the absence of any turning handles – make it tricky to manoeuvre, but once you've got it on your bed, you'll never really have to. You don't have to turn it, although you can rotate it occasionally to maintain even support, according to the care guidelines. Tempur has several showrooms where you can try its mattresses before buying, although you'll need to make an appointment. Locations include Castleford in West Yorkshire, Bridgend, Swindon, Milton Keynes, Durham and both Westfields in London. Whether you buy in person or online, you get a 10-year warranty and a 100-night trial. Type: memory foam Firmness: advertised as medium, panel rated as 5/10Depth: 21, 25 (as tested) and 30cm Cover: unzip to wash at 40CTurn or rotate: don't turn; you can rotate 'to maintain even comfort'Trial period: 100 nightsWarranty: 10 yearsOld mattress recycling: not offered in UKSustainability credentials: Oeko-Tex Standard 100 certified; Pro mattresses are Danish Indoor Climate labelled; UK warehouse operations are zero landfill; Tempur aims to be carbon neutral by 2040 You wait years for a mattress to turn up without being vacuum-shrunk, then they all come at once. As with the Millbrook Wool Luxury 4000, the Tempur arrived full-size and flat. That meant it was ready to sleep on immediately, unlike the oodles of bed-in-a-box mattresses I've tested, and it came packed in significantly less plastic wrapping than they did. The downside of receiving a non-shrunk mattress is that it's harder to get it up the stairs. Tempur's helpful delivery team would have done it for me, but I wanted to see how my husband and I coped (sorry, Alan). The Tempur-branded delivery team was nice to see after so many third-party couriers, but I had to wait three weeks for the mattress to arrive. New foam often has a chemical 'off-gassing' smell, and the Tempur is quite stinky (or fragrant, depending on your preferences) for its first couple of weeks. I don't mind the smell, but you may find it distracting, especially when you're trying to get to sleep. Sign up to The Filter Get the best shopping advice from the Filter team straight to your inbox. The Guardian's journalism is independent. We will earn a commission if you buy something through an affiliate link. after newsletter promotion None like it hot when they're trying to sleep, so I was delighted by the genuinely fresh feel of Tempur's SmartCool cover. Iggy the cat was particularly keen to hog the stitched fabric when July's night-time temperatures exceeded 20C, perhaps because his 4kg body couldn't sink into the heat-trapping memory foam. Our bodies did sink into it, however. As we slept, the foam formed a cocoon around us (mainly our bums), and made us feel like we were floating in the mattress rather than on top of it. There was no sense of sagging, just of strong, deliberate cradling. Firmer mattresses are more to my taste, but they can give me niggling pain from an old rib injury, and the Tempur never did. If you live with pain and find it hard to sleep as a result, the memory foam upper layers of this mattress could be just what you need. My 85-year-old dad, Don, also enjoyed the pain relief of the mattress but has since switched back to the firmer surface to which he's more accustomed. He first tried it lying on his back and said: 'Oh, I like that … I think,' which echoed my own thoughts. I asked him to turn on to his right side to test his recently injured shoulder and hip, and he said there was no pain – a welcome relief for us both. The mattress's motion isolation is exceptionally good. This is something I've learned to expect from highly cushioned memory foam because it absorbs the movement of your body and dramatically cuts down on bounce. Alan and I are fidgety sleepers, so motion isolation helps us rest without being disturbed by each other. As mentioned, some of the higher-density layers of Tempur's mattress are decidedly firm. The Pro Plus SmartCool is also available in two firmer versions than the one I tested. But the medium version quickly turned out to be an over-enthusiastic hugger, at least for our tastes. After the initially pleasurable cradling, it just kept going until it seemed to be swallowing us. 'My bum is disappearing into it,' said Don. He and I are very small, so we didn't sink as far into this mattress as a person of larger build would. My husband, Alan, thoroughly average size, sank too far for comfort and declared it 'like being sucked into quicksand'. We wanted to give the Tempur a fair chance, so we used it on our slatted bed base for several nights, then Don used it on his solid divan base. It never felt lumpy or saggy, but my lower back felt unsupported, and our sleeping bodies made impressions so deep that it became difficult to roll over. If your sleep style involves plenty of tossing and turning, a firmer mattress will suit you better. Edge support is frankly poor for a mattress that costs this much. Even a soft mattress should have some firm reinforcement around the sides to make it easy to get into and out, but when we tried sitting on the edge, we all felt like we were sliding off it. Sitting up to read is difficult because your weight is concentrated on your bum, and you just, well, sink. Even the cover's cooling ability had its limits, as Alan and I discovered when sinking into the foam beneath it. We woke in the night, complaining that we felt we were cooking in the heat of our sleeping bodies. The cover helps by forming a barrier between you and the foam, but we found – in our experience and our heat-retention tests – that it couldn't stop the foam getting hotter than a mattress that contains springs. If you tend to overheat at night all year round, an all-foam mattress isn't for you. Environmental kudos is a challenge for a company that uses this much foam. High-viscosity polyurethane foam is non-biodegradable, has a chemical-intensive manufacturing process and is harder to recycle than fabric or springs. Given all this, Tempur has made decent strides in sustainability. The most noticeable example for me was the dramatic reduction in plastic packaging compared with bed-in-a-box mattresses. There isn't even any cardboard to get rid of. Behind the scenes, Tempur's products are Oeko-Tex Standard 100-certified, and its Danish production facility is ISO-certified for quality, environment, health and safety, and energy. Tempur mattresses are made in Denmark, and its Pro and One mattresses are certified by the Danish Indoor Climate Labelling scheme, a voluntary but internationally recognised standard for chemical compound emissions. Tempur's UK warehouses and distribution centres have been zero landfill since 2019, and the company aims to be carbon neutral by 2040. Foam isn't easy to recycle, but Tempur offers ideas on its environmental sustainability page. Old foam 'can be cleaned and shredded for use in new products, such as carpet underlay', it says, so I'm disappointed that the company doesn't offer to do this with its UK customers' old mattresses. Mattress collection is offered in the US 'on request', but not here. Tempur UK does at least run an online outlet store where you can buy refurbished products, including mattresses that have been returned by buyers within the 100-night trial. The medium version of the Pro Plus SmartCool is a soft, cradling mattress with excellent pressure relief. If you love your beds on the plush side, you may decide it's worth every penny. However, this sumptuous mattress is not for everyone – including my family and me. Perhaps the quicksand sensation was too close to our childhood nightmares to give us the sleep of our dreams. Jane Hoskyn is a features journalist and WFH pioneer with three decades of experience in rearranging bookshelves and 'testing' coffee machines while deadlines loom. Her work has made her a low-key expert in all manner of consumables, from sports watches to solar panels. She would always rather be in the woods
