Book Club
Automation And The Future Of Work
Organized by Dr. Alice Schoonbroodt, Fall 2020
This semester I am running an exclusive book club on the topic of “Artificial Intelligence and Automation and the Future of Work”.
As machines become better and better at tasks that, just a decade ago, we thought of as unautomatable, the question arises as to what tasks will be left for humans so that they can assure themselves an income.
While in the past, automation mainly affected blue collar routine workers, automation is now occurring in occupations that require years of specialization for humans through education and experience. Will these jobs be eroded in the near future? Will there be new types of jobs replacing the old? What are the tasks and skills that complement AI and automation? How has the pandemic temporarily or permanently changed the pace of automation and the types of new jobs created? What does that imply for you as a worker, future employer or business owner?
I will accept 10 to 15 students into the book club - the more diverse in terms of background, major, gender, ethnicity,… the better! To apply, Click the button below. The only restriction is that you cannot be taking a class with me as your instructor this Fall 2020 semester.
FORMAT
Meetings
We will meet on Zoom every other week on Wednesday nights from 5pm to 6:30pm, starting September 9th and ending November 18th, 2020. A casual final meeting after exams are over will complete the book club experience – date: TBA.
At our first meeting, we will discuss several Ted Talks and overview articles from The Economist Magazine and Harvard Business Review. The five subsequent meetings will each be dedicated to the discussion of one particular book on the topic.
TENTATIVE SCHEDULE
The pandemic has certainly changed how I envision the future related to AI, automation and labor markets. In some sense, the pandemic has affected workers who were the least exposed to automation. Some of the changes the pandemic brought about will be temporary, some permanent. I will add articles (I haven’t really seen any books on the topic, yet) as I encounter them. Here are a few articles on the issue. There will be more (hence, the “tentative” qualifier).
COVID-19 & Automation
A Bleak Landscape for Lowest Paid Workers (WSJ, 05-08-2020)
The Future of Work: AI & Automation (NewStatesman, Spotlight, 09-02-2020)
Discussion 1 , 09/09/2020:
Introductory Ted Talks, other videos and The Economist, HBR and OECD articles
Ted Talks
David Lee: Why jobs of the future won’t feel like work
UPS’s David Lee works to create platforms that make it easier for people to turn fuzzy ideas into concrete solutions.
David Autor: Will automation take away all our jobs?
Ford Professor of Economics of the MIT Department of Economics. David Autor's work assesses the labor market consequences of technological change and globalization.
Anthony Goldbloom: The jobs we'll lose to machines - and the ones we won't
Anthony Goldbloom crowdsources solutions to difficult problems using machine learning.
Martin Ford: How we’ll earn money in a future without jobs
Martin Ford imagines what the accelerating progress in robotics and artificial intelligence may mean for the economy, job market and society of the future.
Articles and Working Papers
The Economist Special Report, “The Return of the Machinery Question”, June 2016 — a nice overview of and introduction to the issues
OECD Working Paper, “Automation, Skill Use and Training”, March 2018, estimating the probability of automation for different types of jobs and tasks — I suggest you read the main findings, p.6 to p.10.
Accenture Article, “How Will AI Change Work? Here Are 5 Schools of Thought” — this is actually a chapter from the second book we will be reading but I think it’s a great way to set the stage for this book club.
Discussion 2 : 09/23/2020
Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of a Jobless Future – by Martin Ford
To start, we read this book, which describes the fear of job erosion many people have. It eloquently makes its case and at the same time inevitably reaches the impending doomsday conclusion because it assumes the worst case scenario at pretty much every turn.
It is a great book to read because it describes the fear so well. The economics leave to be desired, though. Spotting the errors in economic thinking or, shall we say, the hidden assumptions that lead to a seemingly inevitable conclusion will be a great exercise.
This book gives us an overview of what economists think about the question at hand. It is written in such a way that an economics major can understand by, maybe, looking up a few concepts.
Later on, we read books by several authors with articles here. Hence, this book sets the stage for more in-depth and refined knowledge from subsequent readings.
This book is a pleasure to read and drives home the case that AI mainly helps us make prediction. It thereby highlights various important skills that humans still – and probably indefinitely – bring to the table: judgement, decision making, strategy and societal questions.
It clearly defines the business strategies of the future where both, humans and AI are used most efficiently.
Discussion 5 : 11/04/2020
Human + Machine : Reimagining Work in the Age of AI – by Paul R. Daugherty and H. James Wilson
This book argues that there is a « missing middle » - jobs where humans and machines perfectly complement each other. After describing the essence of this missing middle, the authors go into great detail describing specific jobs of the future.
The beginning of the book is harder to read but the concepts established really go a long way to give workers of all ages, schooling and experience levels ideas of where to go next.
This book was written by a mathematician and carefully analyzes the nature of creativity. Defining three types of creativity, it then establishes where AI has been able to be creative and where it has not and may never be.
It is a beautifully written book – maybe slightly on the geeky side – with a great mathematician’s perspective broadening your horizons beyond the economics of the question.
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Photo by Susan Yin on Unsplash
More Books
The War on Normal People By Andrew Yang
21 Lessons for the 21st Century By Yuval Noah Harari
Utopia for Realists: How We Can Build the Ideal World By Rutger Bregman
Lectures
How to understand the headlines about jobs at risk of automation? By Alice Schoonbroodt (YouTube, Slides)
TESTIMONIALS FROM PREVIOUS BOOK CLUBS
“
I joined Dr. Schoonbroodt’s AI book club on AI and Automation because I was interested in a technology that promises to have profound effects on most industries. In this book club, you will read books that provide you with different perspectives on what AI is, how it can help and hurt us, and how impactful the changes brought on by AI could be on the future of work. Dr. Schoonbroodt is a great facilitator of conversation, and our group consistently had interesting and insightful conversations about assigned readings. If you are interested in how Artificial Intelligence or Automation could affect your world, I would highly recommend participating.
— Max Pool