The Devaluation of Expertise

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I worried about a world where no one's labor is scarce. I'm not worried about us running out of work and running out of jobs. I am worried about the devaluation of expertise. Waze makes everyone an expert driver, but it doesn't make anyone an expert driver. It has the expertise, right? So there was a time when London taxi cab drivers needed to know all the highways and waterways of London which took years to master. And then that made them really expert. They could get you around London better than any other drug. Well now you don't need to know that - you just need a phone,. That's good for passengers, but it devalues the expertise that

For the last four decades, technology has been mostly a force for greater inequality and a shrinking middle class. But new empirical evidence suggests that the age of AI could be different. We speak to MIT's David Autor, one of the greatest labor economists in the world, who envisions a future where we use AI to make a wider array of workers much better at a whole range of jobs and help rebuild the middle class.

This episode was produced by Dave Blanchard and edited by Molly Messick. It was fact-checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Katherine Silva. Jess Jiang is Planet Money's acting executive producer.

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