L. Rafael Reif, president of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, takes to the opinion page of The Boston Globe to comment on the future of automation. He cites a Pew study in which 72% of U.S. adults are concerned about a future in which robots and computers can do many human jobs.
“As president of an institute with ‘technology’ in its name and national service in its mission, I take these concerns seriously,” he writes. He acknowledges that past technology waves have produced more jobs than they have destroyed while improving living standards and extending life expectancy. However, he comments, many fear that the current wave “…may threaten not only individual livelihoods, but the stability of society itself.”
In response, he writes, “We must proactively and thoughtfully reinvent the future of work.”
As a first step, we need good data on the groups and regions losing jobs to automation. Anecdotal evidence is insufficient. “Government, foundation, and corporate leaders need to invest in better data now,” he writes.
Meanwhile, we can take steps to give laid-off workers skillsets that are in demand today through online credentialing programs and “continuous uptraining,” he writes. Reinventing the future will requires a “whole society effort,” involving institutions like MIT, corporations, governments, and unions and workers themselves.
He expects resistance—such as was mounted against universal public education, the GI Bill, and the post-Sputnik focus on science education. “However,” he writes, “it was such broad, far-sighted investments in human development…that allowed the country to mitigate the immense pain caused by previous technological and societal earthquakes.”
He calls on those leading and benefitting from technology to lead the way to make sure new technologies don’t damage the societies they are supposed to serve.
“At MIT, we are deeply engaged in defining the current problem and forecasting challenges ahead,” he concludes. “And we are urgently seeking allies who want to join in developing creative, collaborative solutions—and in building a future in which technology works for everyone.”
In related news, Makada Henry-Nickie, the David M. Rubenstein Fellow, Governance Studies, Race, Prosperity, and Inclusion Initiative at Brookings, argues that the growing trend of integrating AI into the workforce could affect skilled knowledge workers whose jobs involve data-driven decision-making as well as low-skilled labor markets. She offers a data-point that might prove useful to Reif in an effort to move beyond anecdotal evidence: “…between 2011 and 2017, Goldman Sachs replaced 600 desk traders in its workforce with 200 coding engineers. And Goldman is not alone. Instead, their shift toward algorithmic-based trading is being replicated at an accelerated pace in the investment banking space—an industry that has historically paid extraordinary wage premiums for trading skills.”
She adds, “Conceptually, it is easier to replace these high-skill workers rather than service workers whose jobs depend on personal interactions.” She concludes that “…a new reality will emerge for high-skilled workers: compressed labor markets that mostly value elite technologists who can design complex tasks for uncomplaining machines to perform.”
