Expertise, Artificial Intelligence, and the Work of the Future

Please join us for a Distinguished Lecturer AI seminar with David Autor, Professor in the MIT Department of Economics on Wednesday, Nov. 20, 2024 from 1-2 p.m. ET online.

Abstract

Will recent advances in AI complement human expertise, thereby increasing its value, or render it increasingly unnecessary, thus reducing its value (even if jobs are not in net eliminated)? Autor will frame this question through the lens of three technological revolutions of the last two centuries: the Industrial Revolution, the Computer Revolution, and the AI Revolution. In each, the types of expertise rewarded changed substantially, with vastly uneven consequences for workers in different occupations and possessing different education levels. These forces will play out differently in the AI era than in preceding decades. While the future is not a forecasting exercise - we are collectively creating it - Autor will discuss the opportunities that AI opens for the labor market, as well as some of the risks it poses.

Bio

David Autor is the Daniel (1972) and Gail Rubinfeld Professor in the MIT Department of Economics, co-director of the NBER Labor Studies Program and the MIT Shaping the Future of Work Initiative. His scholarship explores the labor-market impacts of technological change and globalization on job polarization, skill demands, earnings levels and inequality, and electoral outcomes.

Autor has received numerous awards for both his scholarship—the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the Sherwin Rosen Prize for outstanding contributions to the field of Labor Economics, the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship in 2019, the Society for Progress Medal in 2021—and for his teaching, including the MIT MacVicar Faculty Fellowship. In 2020, Autor received the Heinz 25th Special Recognition Award from the Heinz Family Foundation for his work “transforming our understanding of how globalization and technological change are impacting jobs and earning prospects for American workers.” In 2023, Autor was selected, as one of two researchers across all scientific fields, a NOMIS Distinguished Scientist.

The Economist magazine labeled Autor in 2019 as “The academic voice of the American worker.”Later that same year, and with equal justification, he was christened “Twerpy MIT Economist” by John Oliver of Last Week Tonight in a segment on automation and employment.

‍

‍