Don’t fear a ‘robot apocalypse’ – tomorrow’s digital jobs will be more satisfying and higher-paid
If you’re concerned that automation and artificial intelligence are going to disrupt the economy over the next decade, join the club. But while policymakers and academics agree there’ll be significant disruption, they differ about its impact.
On one hand, techno-pessimists like Martin Ford in “Rise of the Robots” argue that new forms of automation will displace most jobs without creating new ones. In other words, most of us will lose our jobs.
On the flip side of the debate are techno-optimists such as Erik Brynjolfsson and Andy McAfee. In “The Second Machine Age,” they contend that continued investments in education and research and development will offset the job losses and generate many new human tasks that complement AI.
While I can’t predict who will turn out to be right, I do ha...