--- title: "The Acceleration Paradox: How Coercive Protectionism Catalyzes Technological Replacement in the Age of Generative AI · AI Fault Line" url: https://aifaultline.com/research/p/doi-10-5281-zenodo-23290520/ description: "AI Fault Line is a neutral, evidence-cited field guide to why experts looking at the same developments disagree about AI's effect on productivity, jobs, inequality, regulation and the pace of change." --- [Research](https://aifaultline.com/research/) # The Acceleration Paradox: How Coercive Protectionism Catalyzes Technological Replacement in the Age of Generative AI Min Jinseong · Zenodo (CERN European Organization for Nuclear Research) · 11 Oct 2026 [Read original source](https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.23290520) Open access Where this sits in the debate - [Will AI destroy more jobs than it creates?](https://aifaultline.com/debate/jobs/) · its finding supports the claim ([why studies differ](https://aifaultline.com/debate/jobs/#why)) Direction of the finding as read from the abstract by an AI model ([AI-written](https://aifaultline.com/about/)). ## Key takeaway [AI-written](https://aifaultline.com/about/) A theoretical paper arguing that labour protections such as mandated wage increases and rigid employment guarantees can lower the threshold for firms to adopt generative AI and automation. Drawing on task-based and game-theoretic models, it argues such protections can speed up the replacement of the workers they aim to protect. ## Abstract This paper identifies and formalizes the Acceleration Paradox: a structural economic phenomenon in which defensive market interventions by organized labor—specifically mandatory wage inflation, rigid employment guarantees, and operational vetoes—inadvertently lower the financial and operational threshold for capital to adopt generative AI and automation technologies. Traditional labor economics posits that wage increases induce capital-labor substitution along a smooth production frontier. However, in the era of high-fixed-cost, low-marginal-cost cognitive automation, labor market rigidity introduces non-linear administrative friction that transforms capital's technology adoption decision from a gradual evaluation into an immediate strategic necessity. Drawing on task-based frameworks of technological change, game-theoretic modeling, and generational political economy, this study demonstrates how institutional protectionism accelerates the obsolescence of the very workforce it seeks to preserve. ## About this publication **Preprint.** A preprint — posted publicly before or without journal peer review; findings may still be revised. Published 2026 (recently) Citations 0 (OpenAlex) 0 citations recorded by OpenAlex — too few 2026 papers in this collection for a fair comparison. [Chart: published 2026] ## More on this topic Related by theme, not necessarily by method or conclusion. - [The Effects of Generative AI on High Skilled Work: Evidence from Three Field Experiments with Software Developers](https://aifaultline.com/research/p/doi-10-2139-ssrn-4945566/) SSRN · 2024 - [GPTs are GPTs: An Early Look at the Labor Market Impact Potential of Large Language Models](https://aifaultline.com/research/p/doi-10-48550-arxiv-2303-10130/) arXiv · 2023 - [Experimental evidence on the productivity effects of generative artificial intelligence](https://aifaultline.com/research/p/doi-10-1126-science-adh2586/) Science · 2023 - [The simple macroeconomics of AI](https://aifaultline.com/research/p/doi-10-1093-epolic-eiae042/) Economic Policy · 2024 Overview assembled automatically from collected metadata. [How this site is built](https://aifaultline.com/about/).