The task force recently released an interim report concluding that the likelihood that AI and automation will wipe out major workforce sectors in the near future is exaggerated. Yet many throughout the industrialized world feel underpaid, exploited and pessimistic about a future where intelligent machines threaten to make them unemployable. The digital era differs from prior waves of automation in a few important respects, said the MIT task force. Low productivity technologies have displaced many categories of work previously done by less educated workers. “Despite the sobering record of the last 40 years, our research argues against fatalism and in favor of tempered optimism,” the MIT task force writes.

Source: Wall Street Journal October 25, 2019 19:18 UTC