A new study by researchers from MIT and elsewhere has found that “most drivers are likely to multitask and get distracted if their vehicles are equipped with partial automation software,” reports William Gavin for Quartz. The researchers “studied how drivers with cars that have the technology behaved after it was enabled,” explains Gavin.
Prof. Daron Acemoglu is a guest on the Financial Times podcast, “The Economics Show with Soumaya Keynes," detailing his research on the economics of AI and implications for workers. He says AI could help the current workforce communicate better and control its own data, while opening up possibilities for the geographically or economically disadvantaged, if the right policies are put in place. “I think having this conversation, and really making it a central part of the public debate that there is a technically feasible and socially beneficial different direction of technology, would have a transformative effect on the tech sector,” he explains.
Writing for Forbes, Andrew Binns highlights research from Prof. Daron Acemoglu suggesting total productivity gains of AI could be as little as 0.53% over 10 years, much lower than common estimates.
In an essay for Project Syndicate, Prof. Simon Johnson underscores for the need for countries around the world to “make strategic investments in key technologies, to create more good jobs, and to stay ahead of increasingly aggressive geopolitical competitors.” Johnson emphasizes: “If you want more good jobs, invest in science, facilitate the commercialization of the technology that results from it, and make it easy for people to build companies where the product was invented.”
Wall Street Journal reporter Justin Lahart spotlights the work of Prof. David Autor, an economist whose “thinking helped change our understanding of the American labor market.” Harvard Prof. Lawrence Katz says Autor has “probably been the most insightful and influential scholar of the labor market” in decades. “To me, the labor market is the central institution of any society,” says Autor. “The fastest way to improve people’s welfare is to improve the labor market.”
A new paper by Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. Simon Johnson uses the impact of automation in the textile industry to predict potential similar effects from AI, writes Bloomberg’s Andy Mukherjee. Noting the parallels between the Indian textile industry and disruption currently underway in tech outsourcing, the economists write “the impact of automation on workers today is more complex than an automatic linkage from higher productivity to better wages.”
Prof. David Autor speaks with PBS host Walter Isaacson about the fear surrounding AI’s impact in the workforce and his view that AI could provide new opportunities for middle class workers. “Most of the time, technology is good for the elite and not so good for everybody else,” says Autor. “[AI] is a case where the technology might compete a little bit more with the elite and enable more people to do valuable work,” resulting in higher wages and more job opportunity for the middle class.
Fast Company reporter Shalene Gupta spotlights new research by Prof. David Autor that finds “about 60% of jobs in 2018 did not exist 1940. Since 1940, the bulk of new jobs has shifted from middle-class production and clerical jobs to high-paid professional jobs and low-paid service jobs.” Additionally, the researchers uncovered evidence that “automation eroded twice as many jobs from 1980 to 2018 as it had from 1940 to 1980. While augmentation did add some jobs to the economy, it was not as many as the ones lost by automation.”
Prof. David Autor speaks with New York Times reporter Steve Lohr about his hope that AI can be harnessed to become “worker complementary technology,” enabling individuals to take on more highly skilled work and find better paying jobs. “I do think there is value in imagining a positive outcome, encouraging debate and preparing for a better future,” Autor explains. “This technology is a tool, and how we decide to use it is up to us.”
Prof. David Autor speaks with Bloomberg’s Odd Lots podcast hosts Joe Weisenthal and Tracy Alloway about how AI could be leveraged to improve inequality, emphasizing the policy choices governments will need to make to ensure the technology is beneficial to humans. “Automation is not the primary source of how innovation improves our lives,” says Autor. “Many of the things we do with new tools is create new capabilities that we didn’t previously have.”
Prof. David Autor and Prof. Daron Acemoglu speak with New York Times columnist Peter Coy about the impact of AI on the workforce. Acemoglu and Autor are “optimistic about a continuing role for people in the labor market,” writes Coy. “An upper bound of the fraction of jobs that would be affected by A.I. and computer vision technologies within the next 10 years is less than 10 percent,” says Acemoglu.
Washington Post columnist Eduardo Porter spotlights various MIT research efforts aimed at ensuring that AI is used to empower human workers rather than replace them. Prof. David Autor notes: “AI, if used well, can assist with restoring the middle-skill, middle-class heart of the U.S. labor market that has been hollowed out by automation and globalization.”
Writing for Financial Times, economist Ann Harrison spotlights research by Prof. Daron Acemoglu, Pascual Restrepo PhD '16 and Prof. David Autor, that explores the impact of automation on jobs in the United States. Acemoglu and Restrepo have “calculated that each additional robot in the US eliminates 3.3 workers” and that “most of the increase in inequality is due to workers who perform routine tasks being hit by automation,” writes Harrison.
New York Times opinion writer Peter Coy spotlights the MIT Shaping the Future of Work Initiative, a new effort aimed at analyzing the forces that are eroding job quality for non-college workers and identifying ways to move the economy onto a more equitable trajectory. Nothing is “inexorable,” said Prof. Daron Acemoglu during the project’s kickoff event. “The answer in most cases is, AI will do whatever we choose it to do.”
In a new study examining the potential impact of AI on jobs that employ computer vision, MIT researchers found, “a vast majority of jobs previously identified as vulnerable to AI are not economically beneficial for employers to automate at this time,” reports Catherine Thorbecke for CNN. “In many cases, humans are the more cost-effective way, and a more economically attractive way, to do work right now,” says Research Scientist Neil Thompson, director of the FutureTech Research Project at CSAIL. “What we’re seeing is that while there is a lot of potential for AI to replace tasks, it’s not going to happen immediately.”