Work is what structures adults' lives: it gives us purpose, focus, a set of responsibilities, and an identity. So when people are not participating in the labour market, all sorts of other things often start to go wrong.
David AutorRead
Our machines increasingly do our work for us. Why doesn't this make our labor redundant and our skills obsolete? Why are there still so many jobs?
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote questions the impact of automation on employment and skills.
David Autor highlights a paradox in the modern workforce where advancements in technology and automation ostensibly reduce the need for human labor, yet many jobs still exist. He prompts a reflection on how new technologies have transformed job markets, creating new opportunities and roles rather than merely rendering existing ones obsolete.
Themes
AutomationJobsTechnologyEmploymentSkills
In practice
Example use cases
In a discussion about the future of work at a technology conference.
More from David Autor
All quotes →The fact that a task cannot be computerized does not imply that computerization has no effect on that task. On the contrary, tasks that cannot be substituted by computerization are generally complemented by it. This point is as fundamental as it is overlooked.
David AutorRead
There's always new work to do. Adjusting to the rapid pace of technological change creates real challenges, seen most clearly in our polarized labor market and the threat that it poses to economic mobility. Rising to this challenge is not automatic. It's not costless. It's not easy. But it is feasible.
David AutorRead
Similar quotes
Security is an endless race - one that you can lead but never decisively win. Yesterday's best defenses cannot fend off the attacks of today or tomorrow.
Craig FederighiRead
A graphic representation of data abstracted from the banks of every computer in the human system. Unthinkable complexity. Lines of light ranged in the nonspace of the mind, clusters and constellations of data. Like city lights, receding.
William GibsonRead
Quite a lot has been written, including by me, about the effect of social media on politics, and in particular the way in which the algorithms built into Facebook and YouTube are more likely to spread angry, extremist and deliberately provocative political language.
Anne ApplebaumRead
Computers bootstrap their own offspring, grow so wise and incomprehensible that their communiqués assume the hallmarks of dementia: unfocused and irrelevant to the barely-intelligent creatures left behind. And when your surpassing creations find the answers you asked for, you can't understand their analysis and you can't verify their answers. You have to take their word on faith.
Peter WattsRead
As we enjoy great advantages from the inventions of others, we should be glad of an opportunity to serve others by any invention of ours, and this we should do freely and generously.
Benjamin FranklinRead
We're not in hardware for hardware's sake. We're in hardware to be able to express all our platform and productivity software in a way that's unique.
Satya NadellaRead