弗尔曼是一个引人注目的案例，展示了他所警告的那种人工智能可能给劳动力市场带来的颠覆。这位贝拉克·奥巴马总统时期经济顾问委员会前主席，通过“氛围编程”构建了 Econvitals，一个免费的经济数据与分析平台。弗尔曼表示，该系统能够完成过去需要经济学家团队才能完成的工作 —— 实际上重现了他曾在白宫领导的 35 人运营团队的大部分分析能力。这让他既对 AI 所开启的可能性感到兴奋，又对后来的经济学家将何去何从感到日益不安。
Furman is a striking case study in the kind of disruption he warns artificial intelligence could bring to the workforce. The former chair of President Barack Obama’s Council of Economic Advisers, he has built Econvitals, a free economic data and analysis platform, through “vibe coding.”Furman says the system can do work that once required teams of economists — and has, in effect, recreated much of the analytical capacity of the 35-person operation he once ran at the White House. That leaves him both excited by what AI makes possible and increasingly unsure about what happens to the economists coming up behind him.
在本周的《Money Talks》节目中，弗尔曼告诉主持人斯蒂芬妮·弗兰德斯，最大的风险或许不仅仅是 AI 取代某些工作，而是它掏空了人们学习如何从事剩余工作的途径。如果机器能完成将初级经济学家、律师和银行家磨练成资深专业人士的那些繁重分析工作，雇主可能就缺乏理由在首置雇佣并培养他们。
On this week’s episode of , Furman tells host Stephanie Flanders why the biggest risk may not simply be that AI replaces some jobs, but that it hollows out the way people learn how to do those that remain. If machines can do the laborious analytical work that turned junior economists, lawyers and bankers into seasoned professionals, employers may have less reason to hire and develop them in the first place.
弗尔曼表示，这可能迫使哈佛等高校（他在那里任教）变得更加职业化。这也意味着学生将需要更擅长使用 AI —— 以及理解人类判断力、创造力和人际交往技能仍在何处发挥作用。
Furman says that could push universities such as Harvard, where he teaches, to become more vocational. It also means students will need to get much better at using AI — and at understanding where human judgment, creativity and interpersonal skills still matter.
他们的对话发生在美国中期选举仅一周后，选民在选举中大幅转向反对共和党，并在多地反对新建 AI 数据中心。弗尔曼认为，针对数据中心的反弹某种程度上是一种干扰：如果 AI 能带来经济回报，他说，数据中心总会建在某个地方。新民主党多数派面临的更大挑战，是如何回应公众对 AI 和负担能力的焦虑，同时又不破坏经济中最大的投资来源之一。
Their conversation comes just a week after the US midterm elections, in which voters swung sharply against Republicans and, in several places, the construction of new AI data centers. Furman argues the backlash over data centers is something of a distraction: if there is an economic return on AI, he says, they will be built somewhere. The bigger challenge for the new Democratic majority is how to respond to public anxiety about AI and affordability without undermining one of the biggest sources of investment in the economy.
富尔曼还列举了他认为民主党在下届国会应重点关注的领域——从医疗保健、关税到能源供应——并解释了为何可负担性政治可能比竞选口号所暗示的要难得多。
Furman also lays out where he thinks Democrats should focus in the next Congress — from healthcare and tariffs to energy supply — and why the politics of affordability may prove much harder than the campaign slogans suggest.