Program > Papers by speaker > Albuquerque Pedro

The occupational singularity: Cognitive technologies as new drivers of inequality
Pedro Albuquerque  1, 2, *@  , Jorge Araujo  3, 4@  , Sophie Albuquerque  5, 6@  
1 : Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques  (AMSE)
École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Aix Marseille Université, Ecole Centrale de Marseille, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales : UMR7316, Aix Marseille Université : UMR7316, Ecole Centrale de Marseille : UMR7316, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique : UMR7316
5-9 Boulevard BourdetCS 5049813205 Marseille Cedex 1 -  France
2 : ACCELERATION & ADAPTATION
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3 : Universidade de Brasília  (UnB)
4 : World Bank Group
1818 H Street, NW Washington, DC 20433 USA -  United States
5 : Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières  (UQTR)
3351, boulevard des Forges Trois-Rivières (Québec) G8Z 4M3 -  Canada
6 : Aix-Marseille Université - École de médecine  (AMU SMPM MED)
Aix-Marseille Université - Faculté des sciences médicales et paramédicales
27 boulevard Jean Moulin - 13385 Marseille cedex 5 -  France
* : Corresponding author

We present a theory of rising inequality due to the emergence of an occupational singularity caused by cognitive technological disruptions. The main innovation of our theory is that, following Vernon Vinge, we assume that cybernetic technologies have physical and cognitive characteristics. We illustrate the theory with a simple Solow-inspired growth model with economic sectors and labor skills that are segmented as legacy or cybernetics, and in which occupational meaning is optimized as humans allocate time between labor and nonlabor occupations. The combination of these model assumptions produce a phase transition, that is, an occupational singularity, which explains emergent socio-economic patterns of the last few decades such as: rising income and wealth inequality, increasing cyber-entrepreneurs power and share of income, decreasing labor share of income, declining number of hours at work, instability of the skill premium, the productivity paradox, and a theoretical validation of Piketty's fundamental inequality when applied to the cybernetics sector.


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