The Luddites and technophobes have a point. Machines do displace workers. Always have. From the cotton gin, machine tools, and punch cards to combine harvesters, industrial robots, and business software. And it is this “displacement effect” that leads to scary forecasts about AI and robots leading to mass technological unemployment and underemployment.

But MIT’s Daron Acemoglu and Boston University’s Pascual Restrepo argue in a rich new paper, “Artificial Intelligence, Automation and Work,” that there is far more to the story. For starters, automation may allow tasks to be performed more cheaply, increasing demand for them. The introduction of ATMs was followed by more jobs for tellers because it reduced the costs of banking, and banks opened more branches. Or the productivity effect could be broader: Agricultural mechanization lowered food prices and created more demand for non-agricultural goods and the workers producing them.