The ESA Central Council were delighted to host Professor David Autor, MIT who joined us for an interesting and insightful webinar.  

Abstract

Will recent advances in AI complement human expertise, thereby increasing its value? Or will AI render expertise increasingly unnecessary, thus reducing its market value -- even if jobs are not in net eliminated? Autor will frame this question through the lens of three technological revolutions of the last two centuries: the Industrial Revolution, the Computer Revolution, and the AI Revolution. In each, the nature of expertise rewarded changed substantially, with vastly uneven consequences for workers of different education levels and occupations.

These forces will play out differently in the AI era than in preceding decades. Recognizing that the future is not a forecasting exercise but an act of collective creation, this talk will discuss new opportunities that AI opens for the labor market, as well as some of the risks it poses.

About the Speaker

David Autor is Ford Professor in the MIT Department of Economics. His scholarship explores the labor-market impacts of technological change and globalization on job polarization, skill demands, earnings levels and inequality, and electoral outcomes.

Autor has received numerous awards for both his scholarship—the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the Sherwin Rosen Prize for outstanding contributions in the field of Labor Economics, the Andrew Carnegie Fellowship—and for his teaching, including the MIT MacVicar Faculty Fellowship.

In 2017, Autor was recognized by Bloomberg as one of the 50 people who defined global business. In March of 2019, he was christened "Twerpy MIT Economist, David Autor" by John Oliver, host of Last Week Tonight, during a segment on automation and employment. Autor is currently determining how to merchandise this title.

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