Opportunity, Policy, and the Future of Automation – Brookings Institution

Despite persistent fears that robots and computers are coming for our jobs, most labor market experts agree that fears (or hopes) for a future where work will be optional, or worse, extremely scarce due to technological change areunlikely. In rare instances, such as the elevator operator, jobs will be rendered completely obsolete. Most jobs, however, will still exist even if fundamentally changed in both task content and form. Technological change willcreatenew tasks and jobsas well.

The productivity and efficiency gains of technological change will be a net positive for society. However, this does not mean wehave no reason for concern. First, the availability of work for all who seek it isa preconditionfora prosperousand equitable society.Advances in automation and AI have the potential to magnify many of the challenges currently facing our society: income and wealth inequality, concentration of corporate power, reduced upward mobility, and persistent disability, gender, and racialdiscrimination. Mitigating potential negative tradeoffs of technological change will require new public policy paradigms to ensure that the most at-risk segments of the population are not left even further behind.

To that end,theFuture of the Middle Class Initiativeat Brookings hosted aneventexploring these topics. A two-part panelfirst considered the role and design of social insurance programs and second, discussed how to foster social mobility and ensure equity of opportunity in the face of automation. The panelists identified key public policy challenges in a technology-driven economy and offered potential non-incremental solutions to best supportlow andmiddle-incomeAmericans.

The first panel,Social Insurance in an Automated Future,featured comments from Diana Farrell, founding President & CEO of the J.P. Morgan Chase Institute, Michael Strain of the American Enterprise Institute, Byron Auguste,CEOand cofounder of Opportunity @ Work, and Marcus Casey, Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Illinois atChicagoand a Nonresident Fellow in Economic Studies at Brookings. The key unifying question: suppose it is 2050 and all routine tasks have been automated, how we can optimally design social insurance so as to insurewellbeingbut also not disincentivize skill acquisition and work? The panel agreed that social insuranceshould not be aimed at long-term replacement of income streams,suchas Universal Basic Income (UBI).Instead, thefocusshould beonredesigningsystems to help themefficiently meet the needs of workers.Accordingly, the panelists offered four key policy solutions:

The second panel,Opportunity and Equity,included NY Times columnist Kara Swisher, Senior Fellow in Governance Studies and Director of the Center for Technology Innovation Nicol Turner Lee, and Peter Blair, an Assistant Professor at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education.They considered the role of private and public institutions in ensuring opportunities and resources would be equitably distributedgiven current inequalities.Without substantial commitment by both market leaders and policymakers, such inequalities are likely to expand rapidly in the future.In this conversation, three key suggestions were made:

Taken together, the two panels emphasize principles for ensuring wellbeing and equitable opportunity for all in atechnologicallydrivenfuture.The viability of this system will require substantial public policy engagement to revise our social infrastructure, including asocial insurance system that provides sufficient, comprehensive, and timely assistance for workers displaced by technological change. It will also require more concentration onensuringequitable pre-market resourcestovulnerablecommunities.

Itis clear that policymakers, private sector organizations, and businesses will needtopartner to develop consensus on theappropriate pathforward.We haveworked on a number of these issuesoverthe past two years, please visit theFuture of the Middle Class Initiativesite to find more information on the various public and private conferences, research papers, and podcast conversationsexploringthis topic.

Read more here:

Opportunity, Policy, and the Future of Automation - Brookings Institution