Is There a Connection Between Computerization and the Productivity Crisis?

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The US Department of the Interior was in on this about talking about the potential leisure crisis. The concern again rose in the early 1960s under the Johnson administration. And they very well may have been right for themselves because, of course, it did take scarce, artisanal skills and basically substitute them with basically machines and children doing those jobs. But more recently, I don't think most people are aware of this. So we have a simultaneous growth of high education, high wage jobs, relatively low education, low wage jobs.

David Autor of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology talks with EconTalk host Russ Roberts about the future of work and the role that automation and smart machines might play in the workforce. Autor stresses the importance of Michael Polanyi's insight that many of the things we know and understand cannot be easily written down or communicated. Those kinds of tacit knowledge will be difficult for smart machines to access and use. In addition, Autor argues that fundamentally, the gains from machine productivity will accrue to humans. The conversation closes with a discussion of the distributional implications of a world with a vastly larger role for smart machines.