David Autor
Ford Professor of Economics, MIT
David Autor, Ford Professor of Economics at MIT, is one of the leading labor economists in the world. He is an internationally recognized authority on how technological change, globalization, and trade agreements affect labor markets. Autor also researches the causes of inequality and its remedies, including the effects of education and disabilities.
David's latest book, The Work of the Future: Building Better Jobs in an Age of Intelligent Machines, is on why the United States lags behind other industrialized countries in sharing the benefits of innovation with workers and how we can remedy the problem. The book argues that we must foster institutional innovations that complement technological change.
Technology. David is best known for his work on how computerization both replaces and complements human labor. He warns against the tendency to exaggerate how much machines will replace humans and proposes ways to deal creatively with the disruptions they cause. He has focused on how automating some of a worker’s tasks can actually improve their economic value because the human half of the partnership now needs greater skills. To meet this challenge we need strong and creative institutions, and especially, education that gives workers the decision-making capabilities they need in an automated economy.
Globalization. David Autor is also an expert on how globalization in general and China’s very rapid rise in particular have affected U.S. labor markets, which has in fact been disastrous for low-skilled workers in manufacturing. Globalization increases the size of a country’s economic pie, but it also makes some of its slices smaller. Autor has clear suggestions for offsetting globalization’s dislocations while continuing to enjoy its benefits.
Credentials. These are just some of David Autor’s positions and achievements.
- Ford Professor of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
- Associate Department Head, MIT Economics Department
- Co-director, School Effectiveness and Inequality Initiative, MIT
- National Bureau of Economic Research
- Director, Disability Research Center
- Faculty research associate, Aging programs
- Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab, Cambridge: Research Affiliate
- Fellow, Econometric Society
- Member, American Academy of Arts and Sciences
- Fellow, Society of Labor Economists
Topics
Expertise, Artificial Intelligence, and the Work of the Future
Will recent advances in AI complement human expertise, thereby increasing its value, or render it increasingly unnecessary, thus reducing experts’ earnings potential (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 types of expertise rewarded changed substantially, with vastly uneven consequences for workers in different occupations and possessing different education levels. These forces will play out differently in the AI era than in preceding decades. While the future is not a forecasting exercise -- it is a collective creation, not a preordained fate -- Autor will lay out the opportunities that AI opens for the labor market, as well as some of the risks it poses.
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Lessons from the China Shock: Economic and Political Consequences of China’s Rise for the United States
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