There has been a lot of talk about how quickly — or not — artificial intelligence is going to replace humans in the workforce. Short version: the robots are learning fast but are not that smart yet.
A lot less attention has been paid to where the impact of job displacement will eventually fall. Although the speed of the journey may be in doubt, the direction of travel is certain: AI will increasingly outperform humans in a widening range of cognitive tasks. And initial research suggests that this AI-driven automation may produce a geographic distribution of disruption unlike any seen before.
It could well be that some of the beneficiaries of earlier waves of industrial automation, who have tended to be clustered in the richer east and west coast cities of the US, will be most exposed to the next big digital dislocation.