Episode 15: Does technology help—or hurt—the workforce? Will AI take your job?
Millions of Americans are no doubt wondering how artificial intelligence will alter their career trajectories. Some may fear they'll need to drastically shift gears because the job opportunities they thought would be plentiful may suddenly disappear.
But the funny thing about technology, according to labor market expert Kevin Murphy, PhD, George J. Stigler Distinguished Service Professor of Economics Emeritus at the University of Chicago, is that we don't know exactly how it will affect the workforce.
AI, for instance, might decrease the need for millions of jobs that are important in today's economy.
But tomorrow's economy, driven by innovations like AI, may also generate millions of new jobs that we can't even imagine today.
Throughout his career, Murphy has studied inequality, unemployment, and relative wages as well as the economics of growth and development and the economic value of improvements in health and longevity.
Murphy entered the business world at 14 when he took an after-school job sorting soda bottles in a small Los Angeles grocery store, working his way up to bagging groceries, according to a profile in University of Chicago Magazine. https://magazine.uchicago.edu/0612/features/murphy.shtml
He stayed in the grocery business through college—and he credits that work for helping him to understand the intricacies of the labor market.
Among the many areas Murphy has probed is the value of education in improving the fortunes of the workforce.
In the battle between people and technology, Murphy insists that the adaptability of human beings prepares them for the unknown.
"People can do all kinds of things and switch from one thing to the other," he says. "Machines historically have been more specialized. … You want people to be able to adapt because predicting where technology is going to go isn't as easy as you think."
In Episode 15 of "The Informed Investor," Dimensional's Mark Gochnour, Head of Global Client Services, welcomes Kevin Murphy to Dimensional's Charlotte office for an in-depth discussion on the history and future of technological innovation and its surprising impact on the dynamics of the labor market and the economy at large.
LINKS FROM TODAY'S EPISODE:
The Informed Investor on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCyJr6FFig-h1mA7rVP7Mbk0irFw2wA90
Mark Gochnour on LinkedIn https://www.linkedin.com/in/mark-gochnour-9a23598a/
The University of Chicago Booth School of Business https://www.chicagobooth.edu/
Learn more at https://www.dimensional.com/
