Category: Academic Analysis

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Mark Shanahan, Associate Professor of Political Engagement, University of Surrey

The meeting and venue were the same, but the style and tone of the two most anticipated keynote speeches at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss town of Davos could not have been more different. On Tuesday, January 20, Canadian prime minister Mark Carney addressed the assembled political and business leaders as one of them: a national leader with deep expertise in finance.

He spoke about a “rupture” in the world order and the duty of nations to come together through appropriate coalitions for the benefit of all. It was a paean to multilateralism, but one that recognised that the US would no longer provide the glue to hold alliances together. Carney never mentioned the US by name in his speech, instead talking of “great powers” and “hegemons”.

Carney’s quiet, measured and evocative case-making demonstrated his ability to be the leader France’s Emmanuel Macron would like to be and the UK’s Keir Starmer is too cautious to be. He was clear, unequivocal and unafraid of the bully below his southern border. In standing up to the US president, Donald Trump, he appeared every inch the statesperson.

Then, on January 21, Trump took the stage. There was none of Carney’s self-awareness and nor did he read the room recognising the strengths, talents and economic power of the audience. Trump started with humour, noting he was talking to “friends and a few enemies”.

But he quickly shifted to a riff on the greatest hits of the first year of Trump 2.0 with the usual weaving away from his script down the rabbit holes of his perceived need for vengeance. Joe Biden still takes up far too much of Trump’s head space, but the next hour could be summed up as: “Trump great: everyone else bad.”

The president is the most amazing hype man for his own greatness, but it’s a zero-sum game. For him to win, others must lose, whether that’s the UK, Macron or the unnamed female prime minister of Switzerland whom he mocked for the poverty of her tariff negotiation skills. It’s worth noting Switzerland has no prime minister and its current president is a man.

While Carney was at pains to connect with his audience of allies, Trump exists happily in his own world where support – and sovereign territory – can be bought, and fealty trumps all. As ever, Trump played fast and loose with facts, wrapping real successes, aspirations and his unique view of the truth into a paean to himself.

He actually returned to his script to make the case for taking Greenland. The case is built on a notional need for “national and international security”, underscored by pointing out the territory is “in our hemisphere”. As so many commentators have said, collective security will do the job Trump insists that only the US can – and won’t require Denmark to cede territory. But Trump is sounding ever-less the rational actor.

Contrasting visions

The coming year is one of inflection for Trump’s presidency. His Republican party may well lose control of the House and possibly the Senate in the November midterms, which would severely curtail his ability to impose his will unfettered.

Trump is focused on his legacy and demands he’s up there with former US presidents Thomas Jefferson, James Monroe, James Polk and William McKinley, expanding the American empire and its physical footprint. This may be a step too far, even for a president with such vast economic and military power.

Carney’s speech played well both at home and around the world. His line, “If we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu,” clearly resonated with his fellow western leaders. His vision for how “the power of legitimacy, integrity and rules will remain strong if we choose to wield them together”, also offered a positive vision in a dark time.

Trump told the audience that he would not use “excessive strength of force” to acquire Greenland. But, ever the real estate developer, he demanded “right, title and ownership” with an ominous threat: “You can say no – we will remember.”

As Trump laid out his grand vision of protecting and cherishing the rich and aligning nations to do America’s bidding, it was in stark contrast to Carney. The hyperbole and self-aggrandising, the insults and threats, and the singular vision of seeing the world only through the personal impact it has on him mark the US president out as remarkable, even exceptional.

But is this the exceptionalism the US wants? Is America about more than the strongman politics of economic and military coercion?

The immediate reaction in the US was relief, jumping on the line that Trump won’t take Greenland by force. It will be telling to look at the commentary as the country reflects on the president’s aim of lifting America up, seemingly by dragging the rest of the world down.

One leader donned the cloak of statesmanship at Davos this week. It wasn’t Donald Trump.

Mark Shanahan has a new edited collection of essays, Trump Unbound, due for publication by Palgrave Macmillan in October 2026.

– ref. One venue, two speeches – how Mark Carney left Donald Trump in the dust in Davos – https://theconversation.com/one-venue-two-speeches-how-mark-carney-left-donald-trump-in-the-dust-in-davos-274062

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Gerard Dooly, Assistant Professor in Engineering, University of Limerick

Plastic pollution is one of those problems everyone can see, yet few know how to tackle it effectively. I grew up walking the beaches around Tramore in County Waterford, Ireland, where plastic debris has always been part of the coastline, including bottles, fragments of fishing gear and food packaging.

According to the UN, every year 19-23 million tonnes of plastic lands up in lakes, rivers and seas, and it has a huge impact on ecosystems, creating pollution and damaging animal habitats.

Community groups do tremendous work cleaning these beaches, but they’re essentially walking blind, guessing where plastic accumulates, missing hot spots, repeating the same stretches while problem areas may go untouched.

Years later, working in marine robotics at the University of Limerick, I began developing tools to support marine clean-up and help communities find plastic pollution along our coastline.

The question seemed straightforward: could we use drones to show people exactly where the plastic is? And could we turn finding the plastic littered on beaches and cleaning it up into something people enjoy – in other words, “gamify” it? Could we also build on other ways that drones have been used previously such as tracking wildfires or identifying shipwrecks.

Building the technology

At the University of Limerick’s Centre for Robotics and Intelligent Systems, my team combined drone-based aerial surveillance work with machine-learning algorithms (a type of artificial intelligence) to map where plastic was being littered, and this paired with a free mobile app that provides volunteers with precise GPS coordinates for targeted clean-up.

The technical challenge was more complex than it appeared. Training computer vision models to detect a bottle cap from 30 metres altitude, while distinguishing it from similar objects like seaweed, driftwood, shells and weathered rocks, required extensive field testing and checks of the accuracy of the detection system.

The development hasn’t been straightforward. Early versions of the algorithm struggled with shadows and confused driftwood for plastic bottles. We spent months refining the system through trial and error on beaches around Clare and Galway so the system can now spot plastic as small as 1cm.

We conducted hundreds of test flights across Irish coastlines under varying environmental conditions, different lighting, tidal states, weather patterns, building a robust training dataset.

Ireland’s plastic problem

The urgency of this work becomes clear when you look at the Marine Institute’s work. Ireland’s 3,172 kilometres of coastline, the longest per capita in Europe, faces a deepening crisis.

A 2018 study found that 73% of deep-sea fish in Irish waters had ingested plastic particles. More than 250 species, including seabirds, fish, marine turtles and mammals have all been reported to ingest large items of plastics.

The costs go beyond harming wildlife, and the economic impact can be significant.

Our drone surveys revealed that some stretches of coast accumulate plastic at rates five to ten times higher than neighbouring areas, driven by ocean currents and river mouths. Without systematic monitoring, these hotspots go unaddressed.

Making the technology accessible

The plastic detection platform accepts drone imagery from any source, such as ordinary people flying their own drones.

Processing requires only standard laptop software. Users upload footage and receive GPS coordinates showing detected plastic locations. The mobile app, available free on iOS and Android, displays these locations as an interactive map.

Community groups, schools and individuals can see nearby plastic pollution and find it, saving a lot of time.

It has already been tested with five community groups around Ireland with positive results, averaging 30 plastics spotted per ten-minute drone flight, varying by location.

Working through the EU-funded BluePoint project, which is tackling plastic pollution of coastlines around Europe, we’ve distributed over 30 drones to partners across Ireland and Europe, including county councils and environmental organisations.

The technology has been deployed in areas including Spanish Point in County Clare, where the local Tidy Towns group (litter-picking volunteers), were named joint Clean Coast Community Group of the Year 2024.

The wider waste story

This is part of a broader European effort to address plastic pollution. Partners such as the sports store Decathlon are exploring how to transform recovered beach plastics into new consumer products – sports equipment, textiles and components.

The challenge isn’t just collection. Beach plastics arrive contaminated with sand and salt, in mixed types and grades. Our ongoing research characterises what’s actually found on Irish coastlines, providing manufacturers with data to design appropriate sorting and recycling processes.

The open source software platforms and the drone technology have already been used in nine countries, engaging more than 2,000 people. Pilot programmes are running in France, Spain, Portugal, Brazil and the UK. What began as a question about making beach clean-ups more effective has evolved into a practical system connecting citizen action to environmental outcomes.

Community feedback from pilots has been overwhelmingly positive. Groups report that the drone-derived GPS coordinates transform clean-up work. One participating Tidy Towns group said that volunteers now head straight to flagged locations.

Groups have also reported increased participation, the gamification aspect appeals to families and participants who might not volunteer otherwise. Additionally, the data we’ve gathered so far is being used by local authorities to understand litter patterns and inform policy decisions around waste management and coastal protection.

Gerard Dooly works for the University of Limerick, Ireland. He receives funding under the BLUEPOINT project (EAPA_0035/2022), co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund through the Interreg Atlantic Area Programme.

– ref. I developed an app that uses drone footage to track plastic litter on beaches – https://theconversation.com/i-developed-an-app-that-uses-drone-footage-to-track-plastic-litter-on-beaches-272322

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Roberta Blake, Professor of Animal Performance Science, Anglia Ruskin University

Humans have long believed horses can “smell fear”. Nervous riders are often told to “relax, or the horse will feel it”. Until recently, though, there was little scientific evidence to show whether this was anything more than folklore.

A new study has found that this belief is no myth. Its results show that horses can detect chemical signals linked to human emotions, and that these signals can influence their behaviour and physiology.

Previous research has pointed to a form of emotional contagion between humans and horses. This is a phenomenon in which the emotional state of one person or animal influences the emotional state of another. But this is the first study to find evidence horses can detect human fear using their sense of smell.

Horses rely heavily on their sense of smell to understand the world around them. Their olfactory system is far more sensitive than ours, allowing them to detect subtle chemical differences in the environment.

There is scientific evidence that horses can select the most nutritious food by smelling it. A 2016 found that horses select foods based on nutrient content (such as protein), not just flavour, and that the way their body responds after eating influences future choices they make about food.

So how can horses smell our fear? Well, human emotions come with physiological changes. When people experience fear or stress, their body, face and voice changes. Their body also releases hormones such as adrenaline and cortisol, heart rate increases, and their sweat composition changes. These changes alter the chemical profile of a person’s body odour, which can carry information about their emotional state.

The scent of fear

The new study found evidence horses not only detect but also respond to human emotional odours. Horses in the study were exposed to human body odours collected via cotton pads wiped under the armpits of people.

These research participants watched either an excerpt from the 2012 horror movie Sinister (to induce fear) or clips, like the Singing in the Rain’s dance scene (to induce joy). The researchers also collected control odours with no emotional association.

The horses showed distinct behavioural and physiological changes when exposed to fear-related odours through the cotton pads, which were secured by a nylon mask on the horses’ noses. They were more alert, more reactive to sudden events and less inclined to approach humans.

And they showed increases in maximum heart rate, which indicates stress, during the exposure to the fear smell from sweat. Crucially, these responses happened without any visual or vocal cues from humans displaying fear.

This finding shows that smell alone can influence a horse’s emotional state. Horses were not reacting to tense body language, facial expressions or nervous movements – they were responding to chemical signals carried in human scent.

Previous research has shown horses seem to be sensitive to humans’ emotional states. In a May 2025 study, horses were shown videos of humans expressing fear, joy or neutral emotions in their facial expressions and voice.

Researchers measured the horses’ heart rate, behaviour and facial expressions while they watched the videos. The horses showed increased heart rates when exposed to fearful or joyful human expressions compared with neutral ones, which indicates heightened emotional arousal.

Fearful expressions depicted in the videos were associated with alert postures in the horses, like holding their head high and pointing their ears back and stress-related facial movements, like wide eyes. Joyful expressions depicted in the videos were linked to patterns associated with positive emotional states, like relaxed nostrils and ears.

Together, these findings are consistent with emotional contagion. Emotional contagion has been documented between humans and dogs, for instance, and these results suggest horses may also be affected by human emotions.

What this does – and doesn’t – mean

These studies do not suggest that horses understand fear in the same way humans do, or that they know why a person is afraid. Instead, the evidence shows horses are highly sensitive to the chemical, visual and vocal cues associated with emotional states.

Smell is probably just one part of a broader physiological system. Horses are adept at reading human posture, muscle tension, breathing patterns, heart rate and movement – all of which change when a person is anxious. These cues shape how a horse perceives and responds to a human.

Understanding how horses perceive human emotions has important implications for welfare, training and safety. Riders, handlers and therapists working with horses may unintentionally influence an animal’s emotional state through their own stress or calmness.

More broadly, the research challenges outdated assumptions about animal perception. Horses are not passive responders to human commands, as equine professionals and researchers thought until recently. They are sensitive social partners, finely tuned to the emotional signals we give off.

Horses evolved as social prey animals living in large herds on open grasslands, where survival depended on detecting danger quickly. Although humans began domesticating horses around 5,500 years ago, this is evolutionarily recent, meaning modern horses still retain highly sensitive sensory systems adapted for vigilance and social awareness.

So, when people say horses can smell fear, science now suggests they may be closer to the truth than we originally thought. And next time you are close to a horse, try to relax, and make the interaction more enjoyable for both of you.

Roberta Blake does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Horses really can smell fear, new study claims, and it changes their behaviour – https://theconversation.com/horses-really-can-smell-fear-new-study-claims-and-it-changes-their-behaviour-273652

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Paty Paliokosta, Associate Professor of Special and Inclusive Education, Kingston University

A campaign – backed by celebrities including actress Sally Phillips and broadcaster Chris Packham as well as MPs – is calling on the government not to scrap or reduce education, health and care plans (EHCPs).

These provide legally binding extra support for children with special educational needs. There are fears that this will be a change outlined in a forthcoming policy paper on schools.

The pressure point for the government is how much it costs. At the moment, EHCP costs come from local authority budgets, which are too low to cover them. A significant rise in EHCPs meant that councils are racking up a cumulative deficit in the billions. From 2028, these costs will be managed by the central government budget.

Mainstream schools in England currently provide what’s called “universal provision”. This is standard support for all pupils, funded by the Department for Education.

If a child needs extra help, schools must offer targeted interventions and resources to remove barriers to learning. This comes from a local authority managed notional special educational needs budget of up to £6,000 per pupil.

If progress still isn’t happening, families can request an EHCP. This unlocks additional funding from (currently) the local authority. It can be used to pay for specialist teaching, equipment, or extra staff, or for alternative provision – education in a specialist school.

Not enough money and bureaucratic delays

The system has been in real need of reform for a good while now.

Waiting times for EHCP assessments are often painfully long. Some families say they feel treated as though they are an inconvenience. Many are fighting legal battles for support: if an EHCP is denied, this can be appealed at a tribunal, where parents are usually successful.

Without the right resources in schools to meet the needs of the children they educate, teachers say they are exhausted. Sencos – teachers in mainstream schools with the overview of special educational needs, and the people holding the fragile system together – report feeling overwhelmed and undervalued. This is not sustainable, but it can be changed.

Under the current funding system, most of the increased costs come from funding special school placements, rather than on inclusive education in mainstream classrooms. The government’s December 2025 announcement of a funding investment to create 60,000 specialist placements in mainstream schools is welcome.

To make special educational needs and disabilities provision fair and effective, better management of budgets at both national and local levels, stronger leadership in schools through a properly resourced Senco role, and comprehensive training for all teachers to support inclusion is needed.

The government has recently announced £200 million to be spent on teacher training to create a “truly inclusive education system”. This very welcome investment marks a significant shift: it recognises that inclusion cannot be achieved through structural reform alone.

It requires a confident, well‑trained workforce able to meet diverse needs early and effectively. If delivered at scale and with fidelity, this could begin to rebalance the system. It would reduce dependence on EHCPs by strengthening universal and targeted provision, and easing the need for specialist placements.

EHCPs are far from perfect, but they cannot disappear overnight without reforms that place inclusion in the heart of universal education provision with statutory protection.

However, once the system is gradually robust enough, EHCPs will be needed less and less.

Without these reforms, families will continue to fight for support without knowing whether this is the best way to have their children’s needs met. Schools will feel pressured to move pupils out of mainstream settings, and costs will continue to rise.

What works

Investment in strong local provision and workforce development can reduce reliance on expensive independent placements, improve outcomes and restore trust between families and schools.

In Kirklees, Yorkshire, schools, families and communities are encouraged to engage in mutual support and shared learning to foster collective responsibility.

Some local authorities are demonstrating what reform can look like. Haringey’s Send and Inclusion Improvement Plan (2024–2025) is built on five priorities: early intervention, meeting needs locally, providing choice, working together with families, and preparing children for adulthood.

Providing early, expert support for the 800,000 UK children with lifelong speech and language challenges would transform lives and save £8 billion annually, according to the Disabled Children’s Partnership and the Speech, Language and Communication Alliance.

Universities need to be involved more than ever, equipping teachers and Sencos with neurodiversity-friendly and dyslexia-friendly research and training interweaved in mainstream, holistic instruction that can continue through in-service training and professional development opportunities.

We’ve seen that children are being placed in costly independent schools with their fees paid by the state. Many are owned by private equity firms that have turned special education into a lucrative business. This is draining public funds at an unsustainable rate, while outcomes for pupils remain stubbornly poor.

The question now is whether the government will be brave enough to overhaul a system that has become both inefficient and inequitable, and deliver sustainable reforms, beyond one-off package funds, prioritising inclusion and early support over bureaucracy and profit.

Paty Paliokosta does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. What’s at stake in special educational needs reform – https://theconversation.com/whats-at-stake-in-special-educational-needs-reform-267474

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Prachi Agarwal, Research Fellow in International Trade Policy, ODI Global

During the 2024 presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to ease economic pressures on households and restore US economic strength. Central to that promise was the claim that tariffs would revive manufacturing and rebalance trade in America’s favour. Once in office, the second administration quickly made trade policy – especially tariffs – a central pillar of its economic agenda.

The introduction of a sweeping tariff regime on April 2, framed as “reciprocal tariffs”, became the signature economic intervention of the administration’s first year in power – and it appears we have not heard the last of it.

The tariffs were not a single event but a sequence of trade actions launched immediately after Trump’s inauguration. In January, the administration announced the “America first” trade policy. This prioritised reductions in the US trade deficit to revitalise domestic manufacturing and promised tougher economic relations with China. Sector and country-specific tariffs followed.

While Trump’s so-called “liberation day” in April set the stage as he announced a range of tariffs to levy against various countries with which the US was running a trade deficit, the implementation was delayed until August, creating prolonged uncertainty for firms and trading partners.

The tariff regime pursued three objectives: raising government revenue, reducing the US trade deficit, and compelling changes in China’s trade behaviour. But one year into Trump’s second term, has this strategy worked?

What worked

On revenue, the policy has delivered. Customs revenue rose sharply by US$287 billion (£213 billion), generating additional fiscal revenue outside the normal congressional appropriations process. In headline terms, the tariffs achieved what they were designed to do: they raised money – but mainly (96%) from American buyers.

Progress on the trade balance (exports minus imports) has been far less convincing. Despite a modest depreciation of the US dollar and stronger export growth during much of 2025, the total US trade balance (goods and services) fell by US$69 billion. While the deficit on the goods trade balance (without services) at times narrowed, there is no evidence that this will be a sustained trend.

Addressing the trade imbalance with China is at the core of the Trump’s tariff strategy. According to trade data from the US Department of Commerce, during the first ten months of 2025, US imports from China declined by 27% – the largest of all US trading partners bilateral decline observed. Tariffs on Chinese products were imposed immediately, without the transition periods granted to most other trading partners. On paper, this aligns with the administration’s objective of curbing Chinese market access.

But this contraction must be placed in context. US imports from China had already fallen by 19% between 2022 and 2024 amid rising geopolitical tensions and earlier trade restrictions. More importantly, China continues to post large global trade surpluses and has diversified both its export destinations and its product composition, reducing reliance on the US.

Rather than weakening China’s trade position, the tariff regime has accelerated supply-chain reconfiguration, as trade is now being trans-shipped through other countries before arriving in the US. Additionally, China has also increased trade with other countries that has replaced the reduction in US-China trade.

On January 20 2025, Donald Trump was sworn in as the 47th president of the United States. His first year in office has seen profound changes both in his own country and across the globe. In this series, The Conversation’s international affairs team aims to capture the mood after the first year of Trump’s second term.

As imports from China fell, US trade diversification intensified due to the uneven application of tariffs across countries. US imports from Vietnam increased by 40% and Taiwan by 61%, while imports from Mexico grew modestly by 5%. Imports from Canada declined, largely reflecting lower oil prices rather than tariff exposure. Overall, several economies increased their share of US imports, pointing to a reshuffling of suppliers rather than a reduction in US import dependence.

What did not work

The uneven rollout of the tariffs, coupled with limited data available through October 2025, complicates assessment of its impact. It is also possible that the January 2025 tariff announcements prompted US firms to bring forward imports ahead of the August implementation date, temporarily distorting trade patterns.

Nonetheless, the domestic price effects are clearer.

Evidence suggests tariff costs have largely been passed through to wholesale and retail prices, contributing to higher consumer prices of everyday goods rather than easing inflationary pressures.

Manufacturing output rose by a meagre 1% in 2025, a muted response given the scale of protection introduced. Industrial growth has also been held back by labour shortages caused by tighter immigration rules, even with strong trade protection in place.

Development impacts

Some of the significant unintended impacts of the tariff regime have been felt beyond the US. Analysis by London-based thinktank ODI Global highlights the extreme vulnerability of low- and middle-income countries caught in the crossfire with high export dependence, lack of other trade partners, and constrained fiscal space.

Combined with cuts to international aid, US higher tariffs could reduce export earnings for many of these countries by up to US$89 billion annually – about 0.7% of GDP on average. In effect, the cost of US protection has been pushed onto other countries.

Beyond this combined exposure of aid cuts and tariff increases, least developed countries (LDCs) face other economic risks. The tariffs were based on bilateral US trade deficits rather than the ability of partner countries to adapt to changes in US tariff policy. This design penalised economies that were highly dependent on the US market, and relied on labour-intensive manufacturing sectors such as clothing and footwear for employment and foreign exchange.

Women make up a large share of workforce in these sectors and have been hit harder than men by the tariff measures.
The tariff shocks transmitted quickly through reduced orders, factory closures, and unemployment, despite the absence of strategic intent to target these economies.

Looking ahead

This tariff experiment now rests in the hands of the US supreme court, with a ruling expected within days. If the reciprocal tariffs are overturned, other options remain available, including a flat 10% tariff on most countries. Under Section 122 of the 1974 Trade Act, tariffs against trade imbalances could be imposed, but only up to 15% and for a maximum of 150 days.

At the same time, the administration has signalled potential new tariffs linked to geopolitical disputes, such as Greenland. This raises the risk of widening trade conflicts.

One year on, China’s global trade position remains resilient and US trade balances show no sustained improvement. Instead, the costs of adjustment have been unevenly distributed across countries, sectors and households. In short, the tariffs may not have made America any greater, but have certainly created economic hardship for others.

Bernardo Arce Fernandez, ODI’s research officer, assisted with the research for this article.

Jodie Keane and Prachi Agarwal do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. After a year of Trump, who are the winners and losers from US tariffs? – https://theconversation.com/after-a-year-of-trump-who-are-the-winners-and-losers-from-us-tariffs-273925

Source: The Conversation – UK – By Renaud Foucart, Senior Lecturer in Economics, Lancaster University Management School, Lancaster University

People have become used to living with AI fairly quickly. ChatGPT is barely three years old, but has changed the way many of us communicate or deal with large amounts of information.

It has also led to serious concerns about jobs. For if machines become better than people at reading complex legal texts, or translating languages, or presenting arguments, won’t those old fashioned human employees become irrelevant? Surely mass unemployment is on the horizon?

Yet, when we look at the big numbers of the economy, this is not what’s happening.

Unemployment in the EU is at a historical low of around 6%, half the level of ten years ago. In the UK, it is even lower, at 5.1%, roughly the level of the booming early 2000s, and it is even lower again (4.4%) in the US.

The reason why there are still so many jobs is that while technology does make some human enterprise obsolete, it also creates new kinds of work to be done.

It’s happened before. In 1800 for example, around a third of British workers were farmers. Now the proportion working in agriculture is around 1%.

The automation of agriculture allowed the country to be a leader in the industrial revolution.

Or more recently, after the first ATM in the world was unveiled by Barclays in London in 1967, there were fears that staff at high street bank branches would disappear.

The opposite turned out to be the case. In the US, over the 30-year period of ATM growth, the number of bank tellers actually increased by 10%. ATMs made it cheaper to open bank branches (because they needed fewer tellers) and more communities gained access to financial services.

Only now, with a bank on every phone, is the number of high street bank staff in steep decline.

An imposition?

But yes, AI will take away some jobs. A third of Americans worry they will lose theirs to AI, and many of them will be right.

But since the industrial revolution, the world has seen a flow of innovations, sustaining an unprecedented exponential economic growth.

AI, like the computer, the internet, the railways, or electric appliances, is a slow revolution. It will gradually change habits, but in doing so, provide opportunities for new businesses to emerge.

And just as there has been no immediate AI boom when it comes to economic growth, there is no immediate shift in employment. What we see instead are largely firms using AI as an excuse for standard job cutting exercises. This then leads to a different question about how AI will change how meaningful our jobs are and how much money we earn.

With technology, it can go either way.

Bank tellers became more valuable with the arrival of ATMs because instead of just counting money, they could offer advice. And in 2016, Geoff Hinton, a major figure in the development of of AI, recommended that the world “should stop training radiologists” because robots were getting better than humans at analysing images.

Ten years later, demand for radiologists in the US is at a record high. Using AI to analyse images has made the job more valuable, not less, because radiologists can treat more patients (most of whom probably want to deal with a human)

So as a worker, what you want to find is a job where the machines make you more productive – not one where you become a servant to the machines.

Any inequality?

Another question raised by AI is whether it will reduce or increase the inequality between workers.

At first, many thought that allowing everyone to access an AI assistant with skills in processing information or clear communication would decrease earning inequality. But other recent research found the opposite, with highly skilled entrepreneurs gaining the most from having access to AI support.

One reason for this is that taking advice is itself a skill. In my own research with colleagues, we found that giving chess players top-quality advice does little to close the gap between the best and the worst – because lower-ability players were less likely to follow high-quality advice.

And perhaps that’s the biggest risk AI brings. That some people benefit from it much more than others.

In that situation, there might be one group which uses AI to manage their everyday lives, but find themselves stuck in low-productivity jobs with no prospect of a decent salary. And another smaller group of privileged, well-educated workers who thrive by controlling the machines and the wealth they create.

Every technological revolution in history has made the world richer, healthier and more comfortable. But transitions are always hard. What matters next is how societies can help everyone to be the boss of the machines – not their servants.

Renaud Foucart does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Why AI has not led to mass unemployment – https://theconversation.com/why-ai-has-not-led-to-mass-unemployment-273405