Technological Unemployment in the Era of AI: Is Full Unemployment Worth Studying?

Integrating Artificial Intelligence (AI) into productive processes has raised concerns about its potential impact on unemployment. However, economic literature has (almost) always considered it impossible for this impact to be so high as to generate full unemployment. Hence, economists have not deemed the topic worthy of theoretical attention. This article has three main objectives: (i) to argue that, regardless of their likelihood, full unemployment equilibria deserve attention from economists since it is entirely legitimate to undertake theoretical studies of phenomena that might or might not occur in the future; (ii) to define full unemployment equilibria, describing their possible theoretical characteristics; (iii) to discuss potential policy measures that can prevent full (and/or mass) unemployment caused by AI diffusion from occurring and/or mitigate its adverse effects if it does occur.