When the Machines Take Our Jobs, Will We Be Freed?

Automation is a new mass economic problem, one that arguably affected the outcome of the presidential election. Thousands of Americans have already been displaced by a force of much more efficient workers—machines. As the full impact of digital technologies is felt, jobs of all kinds, from real-estate agent to pilot to truck driver, will be upended.

Erik Brynjolfsson is the director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, a professor at the university’s Sloan School of Management, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He was one of the first researchers to study IT productivity and quantify the value of the variety of products online (aka the “long tail”). Brynjolfsson’s 2014 book The Second Machine Age (co-written with Andrew McAfee) looked at how digital technology is transforming our jobs and our lives. The authors argued that automation is advancing to the detriment of today’s economy, yet for the potential good of the environment.