The economist behind the ‘China shock’ says AI is a paradoxical  ‘skill-disequalizer’ for Gen Z workers

Gen Z was promised that AI would be the great equalizer: a tool that lets a 24-year-old produce work like a veteran’s. David Autor’s latest research suggests it may do the opposite. In a three-month experiment with patent lawyers, AI improved draft quality across the board. But when researchers took the tool away and tested independent judgment, only the experienced lawyers showed an average improvement. The juniors did not. “Our results challenge the idea of AI being an automatic skill equalizer,” Autor said in written responses to Fortune. “Our data suggest that it’s a performance equalizer, but a skill-disequalizer, in that only practitioners who already had foundational mental models were able to level up their underlying skill sets.” The study sorted lawyers by experience, not age. “Senior” meant seven or more years in practice, and the researchers did not study Gen Z as a group. But early-career workers are the people the…