Artificial intelligence and robotics could rapidly accelerate this trend, with significant implications for inflation, the size of government and United States-China relations.

Over the long arc of history, technological advances have enabled industries to emerge as workers have been able to transition into newer ones as machines released them from "older" jobs. Indeed, 60 percent of workers today are employed in occupations that did not exist in 1940; or 74 percent if we consider just the professional category, which added the most workers during the past eight decades.

However, recent academic research suggests we may have reached an inflection point in the US, whereby technology is now destroying more jobs than it is creating.

David Autor, an economist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and winner of the 2005 John Clark Bates Medal, argues that since 1980, the jobs replaced by automation have not been fully offset by new jobs created. This reflects the pace of technological change and the fact that advancements are now increasingly focused on “professional, technical and managerial occupations,” Autor notes, rather than lower-skilled work.

He finds that machines more powerful than an average human, for example a tractor, are typically labor-augmenting and productivity-enhancing, while machines that are also smarter than the average human tend to be labor-substituting.

And AI is on pace to be a lot smarter than most humans.

While forms of AI have been around since the 1940s, the immense computing power resulting from advances in semiconductor technologies has now allowed machines to attain multidimensional intelligence. It is therefore reasonable to assume that many workers are going to be replaced by automation in the coming decades, even if the best AI is never as creative or imaginative as the smartest humans.

In fact, a 2019 OECE report and a 2018 paper by PriceWaterhouseCoopers argue that some 15-30 percent of all jobs in developed markets are at risk of being automated.

If AI does turn out to be a net job destroyer, what are some of the biggest implications?

First, it’s likely to be deflationary. High and rising unemployment resulting from ever cheaper and more capable machines should, in theory, lead to structural deflation, as technologies that can rapidly augment the supply of goods and services should reduce demand if they cause massive job losses.

Next, the US government will probably get even bigger. In a mass unemployment scenario, the government would likely be compelled to step in to facilitate income and wealth transfers from the owners of robots and tech businesses to unemployed workers.

And which countries will come out on top? The economic winners and losers in the years ahead will likely be determined by who can best create and utilize technology.

The US and China, both dominant in cerebral technologies, therefore appear well-positioned to thrive in this environment. These economic and technology superpowers have adopted muscular industrial policies, while Europe, the other big regional power, has not yet done so.

What this also suggests is that, even if the trade war between the US and China is short, the tech war between these two countries could be protracted, and ultimately much more consequential.

Unlike the trade war, the tech war is dynamic, meaning it’s not about challenging the static comparative advantages of nations, but rather that it is continually evolving and advancing. Investors would be wise to keep this distinction in mind, as the dynamic aspect of the tech war is apt to become much more important than, say, whether Vietnam is allowed to sell cheap running shoes in the US.

My views here are admittedly speculative. But so are the arguments for why AI and robotics could ultimately be labor-creating.

Furthermore, these arguments are often obscured by sloppy references to labor productivity, which is a simple ratio between output and labor input. When calculating this, there is often little explanation of what part of the output should be attributed to the labor input.

For example, should subway train drivers account for the value of the entire subway system? Projections based on such questionable assumptions should be viewed cautiously.

Finally, it's also true that populations in many developed markets are aging, so the heavy use of automation could simply offset the shrinkage in the labor force, something we’re already seeing in Japan and South Korea.

But aging, like natural evolution in general, is gradual, while computational and technological evolution accelerates at an exponential pace. Because of the convexity in technological advances, it’s hard not to bet on technology rather than workers.

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The writer is CEO and co-CIO of Eurizon SLJ asset management. The views expressed are personal.