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David A. Mindell
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The Work of the Future: Building Better Jobs in an Age of Intelligent Machines Kindle Edition

by David H. Autor (Author), David A. Mindell (Author), Elisabeth Reynolds (Author), Format: Kindle Edition
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 17 ratings
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Why the United States lags behind other industrialized countries in sharing the benefits of innovation with workers and how we can remedy the problem.

The United States has too many low-quality, low-wage jobs. Every country has its share, but those in the United States are especially poorly paid and often without benefits. Meanwhile, overall productivity increases steadily and new technology has transformed large parts of the economy, enhancing the skills and paychecks of higher paid knowledge workers. What’s wrong with this picture? Why have so many workers benefited so little from decades of growth? The Work of the Future shows that technology is neither the problem nor the solution. We can build better jobs if we create institutions that leverage technological innovation and also support workers though long cycles of technological transformation.
 
Building on findings from the multiyear MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future, the book argues that we must foster institutional innovations that complement technological change. Skills programs that emphasize work-based and hybrid learning (in person and online), for example, empower workers to become and remain productive in a continuously evolving workplace. Industries fueled by new technology that augments workers can supply good jobs, and federal investment in R&D can help make these industries worker-friendly. We must act to ensure that the labor market of the future offers benefits, opportunity, and a measure of economic security to all.
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  1. Print length
    188 pages
  2. Language
    English
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  4. Publisher
    The MIT Press
  5. Publication date
    June 21, 2022
  6. File size
    1031 KB
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"The authors push back on the notion that technological advances will lead to the elimination of countless jobs in the future.Technological change, they emphasize, takes time to unfold and creates new job opportunities even while destroying old ones.In fact, public policy has been more important than technology in shaping labor-market outcomes, specifically for less skilled workers without college degrees. Although all advanced economies have experienced technological change, the United States has seen a sharper divergence between productivity and wages, a more dramatic decline in labor’s share of national income, and a more pronounced rise in poorly compensated jobs, all as a result of policy, not technology.These economic trends and their social and political consequences, the authors argue, can be reversed by an increase in the federal minimum wage, which would spur employers to take steps to boost the productivity of low-paid workers; by legal changes that enhance the ability of workers to organize and represent themselves collectively."
—Foreign Affairs

"The book provides a valuable catalog of specific policy initiatives that could make a difference."
—Charter News

Review

“For too long, American workers have been left behind. Business leaders have a responsibility to their workers to understand the challenges and opportunities associated with building better jobs. This book, based on leading research and real-world insights, provides actionable recommendations to make technology work for, and not against, most workers.”
—Indra Nooyi, former Chairman and CEO, PepsiCo
 
“Emerging technologies like AI hold amazing potential for transforming our society and economy, but as this book illustrates, they must be coupled with innovations in labor market practices to succeed. The expert authors of The Work of the Future provide tomorrow’s leaders with crucial insights to develop a creative vision for the future—and ensure technology drives opportunity in the years to come.”
—Eric Schmidt, Cofounder, Schmidt Futures; former CEO and Chairman, Google

 “Work is changing in every industry and for every worker in some way. This book provides a road map for how we can shape the future so that it is innovative, equitable, and prosperous. Leaders from every realm—business, government, education, and social organizations—have much to learn from this book!”
—Ginni M. Rometty, former Chairman, President, and CEO, IBM
 
“The Work of the Future challenges us to think deeply and critically about the crisis facing hard-working Americans and shows how a more secure and stable future is a matter of choice, not fate. An accessible but well-researched antidote to much of today’s economic orthodoxy.”
—David M. Rolf, Founder and President Emeritus, SEIU 775; author of The Fight for Fifteen and A Roadmap to Rebuilding Worker Power
 
“Having spent my higher-education career working hand-in-hand with industry partners to ensure our curriculum and technology meet the evolving needs of employers, I see the strategies outlined in this book as critical to our national effort to develop a skilled future workforce and provide good jobs for new and incumbent workers.”
—Annette Parker, President, South Central College

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Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B08VRGLGKF
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ The MIT Press (June 21, 2022)
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ June 21, 2022
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 1031 KB
  • Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 188 pages
  • Page numbers source ISBN ‏ : ‎ 0262046369
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 17 ratings

About the author

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David A. Mindell

David A. Mindell

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Electrical engineer, historian, and entrepreneur. Co-Founder and partner at Unless, a new investment firm focused on supporting companies at the forefront of industrial transformation.

Founder and Executive Chairman at Humatics with a mission to revolutionize how people and machines locate, navigate and collaborate.

A Professor of Aerospace Engineering at MIT, David is an expert on robotic navigation and human interactions with autonomous systems in air, sea, and space. As Dibner Professor of the History of Engineering and Manufacturing, David is a leading authority on generations of inventors, engineers, entrepreneurs, and workers within the great arcs of technological change. He has led or participated in more than 25 oceanographic expeditions, written six books, and is an inventor on 34 patents in RF navigation, autonomous systems, and AI-assisted piloting. He also spent five years as a Department Head at MIT. David co- Chaired MIT’s Task Force on the Work of the Future. David has undergraduate degrees from Yale and a Ph.D. from MIT.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
17 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

There are 0 reviews and 9 ratings from the United States

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SuMuller
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente libro... ejemplo para Mexico
Reviewed in Mexico on March 10, 2022
Verified Purchase
No solo semblantea el futuro del empleo (o el presente ya?) sino que ademas es una buena leccion para nuestros hijos para que se preparen para una nueva realidad laboral y puedan ser relevantes en esta.
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Geoff Crocker
4.0 out of 5 stars An optimistic but unfounded view of future automation
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 30, 2023
Verified Purchase
David Autor, David Mindell, and Elisabeth Reynolds of MIT’s ‘Task Force on the Work of the Future’ conclude that technology is not ‘driving us to a jobless future’ (p135). Rather they focus on the extremely unequal impact of technology adversely affecting low income workers, specifically so in the USA, where low skill pay is 79% of that in the UK, 74% of Canada’s and 57% of Germany’s (p25). From 1978 to 2016, US output/hour increased by 66%, but production worker pay by only 12% (p19). The US labour share of GDP has fallen to 67% from 75% in the 1970s, but more so in sectors using robotics (p30). They are optimistic that a historic virtuous combination of technology, full employment, and high wages (p4), can persist into the future, because i) their research into insurance and health, autonomous vehicles, manufacturing and distribution, additive manufacturing sectors (p41) shows ambiguous outcomes with ‘momentous impacts, unfolding gradually’ (p75), and ii) a continuing trend of new job creation since ‘most of today’s jobs hadn’t even been invented in 1940’ (p7). They expect this to result from ‘unforeseen technologies (which) will not necessarily benefit all workers’ (p135). To correct the distributional consequences, they propose a combination of vocationally focussed education and training, an increased minimum wage which is comparatively low in the US, increased public R&D, more effective collective bargaining, and more equal labour and capital taxation. They favour their work-centric philosophy over proposals for a universal basic income (p102).

Their confidence is uplifting but not well founded. Their empirical report does not cover the widespread closure of staffed high street banks, transportation ticket offices, or the shift of insurance and retail purchases on line. They claim that only one or two assembly lines operated 10 years ago (p3)!, and that radar was invented in the USA (p122)! But their case admittedly relies on ‘yet unforeseen technologies’ (p135) and so is an extrapolation into the unknown.
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