Former Salesforce AI CEO warns AI may quietly push wages down

Clara Shih, the former CEO of Salesforce AI, warns that artificial intelligence could depress wages across industries rather than only eliminate jobs. She says wage resets are a more common, insidious, and often equally disruptive outcome of new technologies, writing about the risk in an X post.

Shih outlines three ways AI can push pay down. First, an “intra-sector squeeze” can force laid-off workers to compete for a shrinking number of roles in the same industry — she points to manufacturing after early-2000s trade shocks, when the US Bureau of Labor Statistics estimates 5.5 million manufacturing jobs were lost between 2000 and 2017 and an NBER paper found affected workers accumulated substantially lower earnings from 1992 to 2007.

Second, technology can lower the skill floor for once-specialized work, expanding the labor pool — London’s black cab drivers, who long relied on mastering “The Knowledge,” were undercut by GPS and ride-hailing apps.

United States, London

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