As the artificial intelligence revolution unfolds, debates about its impact on the American economy often hinge on the belief that if the technology creates more jobs than it destroys, it will be a success. But the more important question is often the most overlooked: Who will bear the costs of the AI revolution?
For a decade, we have taught a Columbia Business School course called Bridging the American Divides. The class includes a four-day visit to Youngstown, Ohio, to help students understand what national economic statistics often fail to capture: what happens when a booming economy leaves a community behind.
On “Black Monday” in 1977, Youngstown Sheet & Tube announced the closure of its Campbell Works, eliminating thousands of jobs overnight. Tens of thousands more disappeared in the years that followed. Youngstown’s population, which was over 120,000 at that time, has since fallen to fewer than 60,000 today.
At the time, many economists highlighted those gains for the country. They weren’t wrong. But they largely missed something equally important: the costs were not spread across America. They were concentrated among specific workers, families, and communities.
Jobs disappear, but so do tax revenues, local businesses, and confidence in the future. Neighborhoods can become ravaged by crime and drugs. Young people typically leave. Those who remain tend to not only lose employment but also identity and purpose. Distrust grows toward political, economic, and educational institutions that seem unable or unwilling to help. The result: community and social bonds are diminished.
A Brookings report finds “the concentration of exposed and vulnerable workers is greatest in smaller metro areas” like Laramie, Wyoming, Huntsville, Texas, and Stillwater, Oklahoma. The Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia identifies New Jersey’s Trenton-Princeton metropolitan area and State College, Pennsylvania, as highly exposed. MIT’s AI Labor Map identifies hundreds of cities with “economic exposure” from Tallahassee, Florida, to Boulder, Colorado.
But history shows that new opportunities do not necessarily reach the workers and communities that lose jobs. If jobs transfer to new places, some people may not be able to move with them—they have mortgages, aging parents, children in school, social networks, and identities rooted in place. And many workers have developed skills over decades that are not easily transferable. Labor markets adjust faster than communities do.
Youngstown, in its efforts to progress, can provide guidance for communities facing AI disruption.
Finally, recovery takes time, so there can be no expectation of magic short-term revitalization. That may be the most important lesson Youngstown offers as artificial intelligence reshapes the American economy. The goal should not be to slow technological progress. America has always prospered by embracing innovation. The goal should be to ensure that the gains from AI will go towards supporting the businesses, governments, educational and nonprofit organizations that must work together to rebuild the communities that bear its costs.
The next Youngstown does not have to happen. Avoiding it will require asking a better question now, before AI transforms the economy; not simply whether America will benefit, but whether the communities disrupted by that progress will have the opportunity to share in it.
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