IWB Blog
A collection of observations, news and resources on the changing nature of innovation, technology, leadership, and other subjects.
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Category: Future of Work
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“Broadly speaking, many — perhaps most — workplace technologies are designed to save labor,” wrote MIT economist David Autor in his 2015 paper, “Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? The History and Future of Workplace Automation.” “Given that these technologies demonstrably succeed in their labor saving objective and, moreover, that we invent many more…
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“The Coming AI Economic Revolution: Can Artificial Intelligence Reverse the Productivity Slowdown?” was recently published in Foreign Affairs by James Manyika and Michael Spence, two authors I’ve long admired. James Manyika is senior VP of research, technology and society at Google, after serving as chairman and director of the McKinsey Global Institute from 2009 to…
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“Large language models such as ChatGPT are emerging as powerful tools that not only make workers more productive but also increase the rate of innovation, laying the foundation for a significant acceleration in economic growth,” wrote economists Martin Neal Bailey, Erik Brynjolfsson, and Anton Korinek in “Machines of mind: The case for an AI-powered productivity…
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In mid-November, The Economist published “The World Ahead 2024,” its 38th annual issue that examines the trends and events that will likely shape the coming year. Last year, the overriding message from “The World Ahead 2023” was that after two years in which the pandemic was the dominating force shaping the immediate future, the war…
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“Business leaders are struggling to understand how seriously they should take the latest phenomenon in the world of artificial intelligence: generative AI,” wrote Andrew McAfee, Daniel Rock, and Erik Brynjolfsson in their recent Harvard Business Review (HBR) article “How to Capitalize on Generative AI.” “On one hand, it has already displayed a breathtaking ability…
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In 2014, NY Times journalist David Leonhardt published a column with the provocative title: “Is College Worth It?” Despite the mounting debts incurred by many students to obtain a post-secondary education, “The decision not to attend college for fear that it’s a bad deal is among the most economically irrational decisions anybody could make in 2014. The…
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“When OpenAI unleashed its humanlike ChatGPT software on the world last year, one thing was clear: These AI systems are coming for our jobs. But don’t write off the humans just yet.” said “The New Jobs for Humans in the AI Era,” a WSJ article published on October 5. As has been the case with…
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Over the past three decades, high skill jobs requiring expert problem solving and complex communication skills significantly expanded, with the earnings of the college educated workers needed to fill such jobs rising steadily. Conversely, opportunities and wages declined for less educated middle skill blue-collar manufacturing jobs and white-collar administrative jobs whose careers have been upended…
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“One of the most enduring macroeconomic puzzles of the last several decades is the pervasive slowdown in productivity growth across industrialized nations, despite breakneck advances in information and communication technologies (ICT) and electronics,” wrote economists Daron Acemoglu, David Autor, and Christina Patterson in their recent paper Bottlenecks: Sectoral Imbalance and the US Productivity Paradox. Over…
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“The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted labor markets globally during 2020,” said a February 2021 McKinsey report on “The future of work after COVID-19.” “The short-term consequences were sudden and often severe: Millions of people were furloughed or lost jobs, and others rapidly adjusted to working from home as offices closed. Many other workers were deemed essential…