Will artificial intelligence improve workers’ lives or just hand them the equivalent of a pink slip? It is one of the most pressing questions facing the U.S. economy, and polling shows that Americans are currently more anxious than excited about AI’s effect on work. 

Even among top economists, there is a sharp divergence of opinion. While there is broad consensus that AI will boost near-term productivity, experts are split on whether the technology will ultimately eliminate more jobs than it adds. The prevailing narrative focuses heavily on cognitive displacement, warning that experienced workers in routine, information-processing roles face the greatest risk.

However, this focus on taking humans out of the work equation overlooks a massive, offsetting effect of AI: its potential to improve the lives of workers and their households by increasing their mobility. We are already seeing the vanguard of these advances in the deployment of robotaxis throughout the world and late-stage experiments with autonomous trucking and drone deliveries. By applying artificial intelligence to the physical world, we are on the verge of fundamentally reducing the cost of distance — the ultimate physical friction of geography and human physiology that constrains all markets and, above all, the labor market.

AI serves as the “brain” of an autonomous vehicle, allowing it to drive itself by perceiving and, as necessary, communicating with its surroundings through vehicle-to-everything (“V2X”) communications, making real-time routing decisions and navigating without human intervention. The next iteration, cooperative automated driving, in which vehicles communicate with one another using local networks, has the potential to smooth traffic flows, reduce travel times and improve reliability. By ameliorating the massive congestion and safety externalities that plague our current infrastructure, it offers the prospect of virtually eliminating accidents.

Consider how the returns to work change when we analyze the labor market through the lens of a world in which AVs are widely adopted  — particularly the 69 percent of  commuters who regularly drive their cars to work alone — and the firms that employ them. 

Expanded Job Reach and Matching. Dependence on driving yourself to work every day plainly reduces the practical limits of job search radius. By reducing congestion and improving safety, AVs could drastically lower this barrier, compressing out-of-pocket, travel-time and safety-related costs. Expanding workers’ viable spatial reach gives individuals a better chance to match their marketable talents and secure higher wages.

Reclaiming the Commute. By freeing commuters from the active task of driving, AVs could transform vehicles into mobile offices and/or restorative leisure spaces. This would drastically reduce the psychological burden of travel time, converting the daily commute (which surveys consistently rank as a leading source of daily stress) into an extension of the home or workplace.

Preserving Human Capital. Today’s high-risk transportation network imposes a massive tax on human capital. Every mile traveled carries a statistical risk of mortality, morbidity and vehicle damage. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, the societal cost of motor-vehicle crashes annually — accounting for loss of life, pain and suffering, and direct economic losses — exceeds $1 trillion. 

Scaling Firm Output and Employment. AI-driven autonomous trucking removes the driver fatigue factor, effectively allowing freight to move 24/7. This would cut intercity transit times in half and drastically reduce the unpredictability of deliveries. The resulting drop in the need to hold inventory would unlock hundreds of billions of dollars in capital. 

The Synergistic Connection. Connecting these mobility breakthroughs back to the broader debate about AI and jobs reveals a profound synergy that the current conversation entirely misses. When we worry about AI eliminating human tasks, we treat the labor market as a static, local pool. But AI for mobility dynamizes that pool. The efficiencies gained from safer, faster commutes and streamlined logistics don’t just insulate workers from displacement. They lower the baseline costs of doing business, enhance supply chain resilience and expand a firm’s capacity to create jobs. Overlooking AI’s role in mobility means ignoring the primary economic mechanism capable of absorbing labor disruptions and converting abstract productivity into tangible household wealth.

The integration of AI into our mobility networks is a marathon, not a sprint. It represents a structural transition from a system constrained by human biology to one constrained only by infrastructure and energy. Unfortunately, AI in mobility is frequently written off by critics and ignored by technophobic policymakers before it has even reached the starting line. Policymakers have historically failed to encourage efficient innovations, allowing systemic frictions to metastasize. To date, the federal government has done little to expedite AV testing and adoption.

This must change. Human progress has always been benchmarked by the elimination of spatial constraints. When early civilizations transitioned out of the nomadic hardships of the Neolithic Age, the development of permanent settlements and physical transport infrastructure allowed specialized labor and diverse markets to evolve. Today, if we are to have an accurate vision of how artificial intelligence will shape the future of work, we must recognize that its ultimate labor market dividend will come not just from writing computer code faster, but also from fundamentally increasing the extent of the market to elevate the daily lives of households.