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The Work of the Future
Report

The Work of the Future

Shaping Technology and Institutions

David Autor, David A. Mindell and Elisabeth B. Reynolds
MIT Task Force, 2019
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Editorial Rating

9

Qualities

  • Analytical
  • Overview
  • Concrete Examples

Recommendation

Are AI and robots really well on their way to bringing mass unemployment to the American workforce? This torn-from-the-headlines rhetoric reflects an alarming truth: In recent decades, stagnating wages and evaporating opportunities for upward economic mobility have created severe income inequality. Still, according to this detailed and hopeful report from the MIT Task Force on the work of the future, such developments are not the inevitable result of technological advances. If America invests in its people and promotes pro-labor, pro-innovation policies, it can ensure widespread prosperity. 

Take-Aways

  • Since the 1980s, wage distributions in the United States have become increasingly polarized.
  • Technology will affect all jobs, but not in the same ways.
  • By choosing to invest in its workforce and pursue pro-labor, pro-innovation policies, the United States can return to a state of widespread prosperity.

About the Authors

David Autor, is Ford Professor of Economics and co-chair of the MIT Task Force; David A. Mindell is Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing, Professor of Aeronautics and Astronautics, and co-chair of the MIT Task Force; Elisabeth B. Reynolds is Principal Research Scientist and Executive Director of the MIT Task Force.

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