President L. Rafael Reif spoke with Bloomberg’s Peter Barnes about the future of work and stressed the importance of education in preparing workers for an ever-changing job market. Reif said that MIT’s MicroMasters programs offer students an opportunity to, “learn something new and train yourself for the jobs of the future.”
Prof. Max Tegmark speaks with Ariel Conn of HuffPost about his new book “Life 3.0: Being Human in the Age of Artificial Intelligence.” “I’m optimistic that we can create a great future with AI,” says Tegmark. “It’s going to require that we really think things through in advance.”
New York Times reporter Eduardo Porter speaks with Prof. Paul Osterman about his new book, which examines the need for better home health care in the U.S. Porter writes that in his book, Osterman suggests that improving home health care jobs, “could actually improve the quality and efficiency of the entire health care system.”
The Economist reviews Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson and Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee’s latest book, which examines how new digital technologies will impact businesses. Brynjolfsson and McAfee, “believe that the latest phase of computers and the internet have created three shifts in how work happens.”
Randall Stross of The Wall Street Journal examines the latest book by Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson and Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee, which explores technologies shaping the future of business. Stross writes that the, “authors present a splendid tutorial on things that are too new for most civilians to have gained a good understanding of—cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, distributed ledgers, and smart contracts.”
In an article for Bloomberg, Peter Coy examines Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson and Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee’s latest book, which examines how smart machines might be integrated into the businesses of the future. Coy explains that the book is written for, “executives and entrepreneurs trying to make their way in this brave new world of driverless cars and hackathons.”
Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson and Principal Research Scientist Andrew McAfee speak with Tom Ashbrook of On Point about their new book, “Machine, Platform, Crowd.” Speaking about how much decision-making machines could be handling in the future, Brynjolfsson explains that “instead of having us humans try to tell the machines exactly what needs to be done, machines are learning on their own.”
In an article for The Hill, Prof. Valerie Karplus highlights the economic risks of ignoring the emerging market for clean energy. Karplus writes that, “abandoning the fight against climate change…will take away U.S. jobs.”
New Scientist reporter Timothy Revell writes that a new study by Prof. Iyad Rahwan shows that automation will have a larger impact on jobs in smaller cities. Rahwan and his colleagues found that “towns and small cities have a smaller proportion of jobs that will be resilient to automation than larger urban centers.”
Prof. Eric Lander, founding director of the Broad Institute, writes for The Washington Post about the importance of federal funding for scientific research, noting that scientific advances help drive the American economy. “When scientific breakthroughs spawn new industries and jobs, those benefits occur right here in the United States,” Lander explains.
Jordan Graham writes for The Boston Herald about a panel discussion at MIT on the future of work, which featured Alphabet CEO Eric Schmidt. During the discussion, Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson noted that “there’s huge opportunities for creating new kinds of jobs, new kinds of work using technology.”
Andrew McAfee, a principal research scientist at MIT, discusses the effects of automated labor and the role of higher education with Steve Kolowich of The Chronicle of Higher Education. “We need an educational system now that excels at producing people to do the things that computers can’t do,” explains McAfee.
In an article for Forbes, Devin Cook, executive producer of MIT’s Inclusive Innovation Challenge, explains that the challenge is aimed at finding new ways for people to “share in the prosperity that digital technology creates.”
A new paper co-authored by Prof. Daron Acemoglu examines the impact of automation on the U.S. job market, according to The Economist. The researchers found that “between 1990 and 2007, each industrial robot added per thousand workers reduced employment in America by nearly six workers.”
A study co-authored by Prof. Daron Acemoglu finds that every new robot added to American factories reduced employment in the surrounding areas, reports Cora Lewis for CNBC. According to the study, the areas experiencing major decline were “routine manual occupations, blue-collar workers, operators and assembly workers, and machinists and transport workers.”