How to Make the Environment Predictable

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Andrew Wiles: College is overrated, but the parts of college that people ought to be focusing on are math and communication. Andrew Wiles: How do we deal with machines that are inflexible? We make the environment predictable so it doesn't demand flexibility. He says a company called Kiva helps warehouses organize goods in such a way that they'd vastly reduce the need for a human touch.

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.