Writing for Wired, Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu predicts that expectations for generative AI will need to recalibrated during the year ahead. Acemoglu notes that he believes in 2024, “generative AI will have been adopted by many companies, but it will prove to be just ‘so-so automation’ of the type that displaces workers but fails to deliver huge productivity improvements.”
Prof. Julie Shah speaks with Wall Street Journal reporter Lauren Weber about the implementation of automation in the work force. According to Shah, “when companies adopt automation successfully, they end up adding workers as they become more productive and fill more orders,” writes Weber. “And machines’ lack of flexibility has often resulted in what Shah calls ‘zero-sum automation,’ where gains in productivity are canceled out by the need for people to fix or reprogram robots and compensate for their drawbacks.”
Prof. Zeynep Ton speaks with Marketplace host Meghan McCarty Carino about the impact of automation, such as self-service kiosks or chatbot customer service agents, on retail shopping. When thinking about self checkout stations and chatbots, Ton recommends companies evaluate whether the technologies can “improve value for the customer? And would this improve productivity for employees and make their jobs better so that they can serve the customers much better too.”
Prof. Daron Acemoglu speaks with CNBC about the potential impact of AI in the workplace. “I think the incentive in the industry… especially with the idea that you have to dominate the market by becoming the largest players, I think those are not helping because those are making us rush down the easiest road, the lowest resistance path, which is often automation,” says Acemoglu. “I don’t think that is going to get us the kind of aspirations that are articulated where we can make blue collar workers, electricians, nurses, teachers much more capable because we have given them tools to be better workers and to make much higher quality services.”
Prof. David Autor speaks with Delphine Strauss of the Financial Times about the risks AI poses to jobs and job quality, but also the technology’s potential to help rebuild middle-class jobs. “The good case for AI is where it enables people with foundational expertise or judgment to do more expert work with less expertise,” says Autor. He adds, “My hope is that we can use AI to reinstate the value of skills held by people without as high a degree of formal education.”
A study by MIT researchers shows that “workers have cost employers a 25% tax rate, while the rate of software and equipment has stood around 5%,” write Diego Areas Munhoz and Samantha Handler for Bloomberg. “This lopsidedness in tax code gives employers more reason to invest in automating goods like machines and computer software instead of workers.”
“Power and Progress,” a new book by Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. Simon Johnson, has been named one of the best new books on economics by the Financial Times. “The authors’ nuanced take on technological development provides insights on how we can ensure the coming AI revolution leads to widespread benefits for the many, not just the tech bros,” writes Tej Parikh.
Writing for The New York Times, Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof Simon Johnson make the case that “rather than machine intelligence, what we need is ‘machine usefulness,’ which emphasizes the ability of computers to augment human capabilities. This would be a much more fruitful direction for increasing productivity. By empowering workers and reinforcing human decision making in the production process, it also would strengthen social forces that can stand up to big tech companies.”
Guardian reporter Will Hutton spotlights “Power and Progress,” a new book by Institute Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. Simon Johnson that makes the case that “the political struggle has consistently aimed to contain excessive inequality of wealth, and act collectively to share prosperity. It is successive waves of transformative technologies above all that bring the productivity gains that create great wealth, only for it to be captured by the incumbent elite.”
Financial Times correspondent Rana Foroohar spotlights Prof. Daron Acemoglu and Prof. Simon Johnson’s new book, “Power and Progress,” which “explores several moments over the last millennium when technology led to the opposite of shared prosperity.” In the book, Acemoglu and Johnson “take a different approach to the productivity gains of technology and how they get distributed compared with most of their peers.”
Writing for The Hill, Prof. Daniela Rus, director of CSAIL, explores how automation could ease the supply chain crisis. “Automation in these settings doesn’t mean replacing employees, but developing more robust inventory management software and using systems like scanners and conveyors that make our jobs easier,” writes Rus. “This would enable warehouse workers to focus on other more detail-oriented roles, from overseeing the operation of forklifts to improving the efficiencies of distribution centers.”
A new study from researchers at MIT and Dartmouth suggests that the speed of automation should be halved, reports Adi Gaskell for Forbes. Their paper showed that “while investments in automation usually result in higher productivity in firms, and therefore often more employment, it can be harmful to those who are displaced, especially if they have few alternative options,” writes Gaskell.
Graduate student Anna Waldman-Brown writes for Wired about the future of automation technology and how it can impact labor dynamics in the future. “While some scholars believe that our fates are predetermined by the technologies themselves, emerging evidence indicates that we may have considerable influence over how such machines are employed within our factories and offices – if we can only figure out how to wield this power,” writes Waldman-Brown.
TechCrunch reporter Brian Heater spotlights MIT startup Strio.AI, which is aimed at bringing autonomous picking and pruning to strawberry crops.
Prof. David Autor speaks with New York Times columnist Peter Coy about the new book he wrote with Prof. David Mindell and Elisabeth Reynolds, “The Work of the Future: Building Better Jobs in an Age of Intelligent Machines.” Autor explains that: “Most people’s fear of technology is really a fear of capitalism, what the markets will do with the technology. You can’t make a lot of progress if you’re making people poorer at the same time.”