Race With the Machine

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Sally Kohn: There are a lot of ways that technology helps us, makes us more productive and creates new opportunities. She says people grossly overestimated the potential benefits from outsourcing jobs to other countries. But she adds there is grounds for optimism about how we will cope with it all. Skelton: We do need a better school system; but I'm not as worried as the pessimist.

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.