David Autor on the Future of Work and Polanyi's Paradox

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.

You can listen to David Autor on the Future of Work and Polanyi's Paradox online on Radio and Podcast. Open the player on this page to stream the available audio.

David Autor on the Future of Work and Polanyi's Paradox is an episode from EconTalk Archives, 2014 by Library of Economics and Liberty.

This episode is 1:09:24 long.

This episode was published on Oct 6, 2014.

Yes. Use the heart button on the episode page to add it to your favorite episodes list.

Yes. This page shows related episodes from EconTalk Archives, 2014 when more episodes are available from the podcast feed.