The Moravix Paradox

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We've made progress on automating many things and that initially seemed extremely challenging. People thought teaching how the computer played chess would be just an extremely hard problem because we know that test masters or geniuses, et cetera. And as it turned out, actually, that problem would solve relatively quickly. Any inexpensive software can now pretty much beat the world's best chess players. John: In the long run over 10 years or 20 years or more, like 30 or 50 years, many of these problems will make substantial progress.

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.