CONTENTS

The Big Question

Top Tech Jobs

BUSINESS REPORT
Q&A: VC Steve Jurvetson

Productivity and Inequality

The Future
Chinese Angst over Uber

HR by Algorithm

Tech for an Aging Workforce

of Work
Radiology’s Growth

Research Report
Work, Jobs and
Employment
Technology is changing the nature of the jobs we do and the
way we do them. What does that mean for the future of work?
JOSH COCHRAN

INDUSTRIAL LIAISON PROGRAM EDITION 1

MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM THE FUTURE OF WORK

to quantify how likely jobs are to be com- A growing number of platforms like
The Big Question puterized by evaluating how much cre- Upwork, TaskRabbit, Uber, Airbnb, and
ativity, social intelligence, and dexterity others that connect freelancers to clients

Work in they involve. Choreographers, elemen-

tary school teachers, and psychiatric social
are creating a new type of labor mar-
ket, something consultant Sangeet Paul

Transition workers are probably safe, according to

that analysis, while telemarketers and tax
Choudary calls “networked work.” In this
world, workers are responsible for their
preparers are more likely to be replaced. own development and assume many
Digital technologies are changing the Most professions won’t go the way of of the risks employers once bore. They
nature of the jobs we do. What does that the telemarketer, but the work involved is depend on the platform for business, but
mean for the future of work? likely to migrate toward the tasks humans they also have the ability to develop a rep-
are uniquely skilled at, with automation utation based on client satisfaction.
● About five years ago, machine learning taking over tasks that are rules-based and This networked model is disruptive
reached a point where software could, predictable. enough to have led to riots in Tianjin,
with guidance from senior lawyers, effec- How jobs are evolving in this new China, where taxi drivers are fighting the
tively take over the time-­intensive task of model of work is the big question this arrival of Uber and the bite it has taken
legal discovery, in which one party in a report seeks to examine. out of their income. The people who drive
lawsuit combs through its documents to In addition to affecting the type of for Uber are largely part-timers looking to
determine what it must show to the other work we do, digital and mobile technolo- make a little extra money. Uber custom-
side before trial. gies are changing how we do it, where we ers in China take nearly one million rides
This is a job that junior lawyers, para- do it (at home or remotely), and who our a day, the company says, and manage-
legals, or—increasingly—less expensive competition is. At Upwork, a platform ment is investing more than $1.1 billion
contract lawyers had traditionally done, that connects freelancers with jobs, 50 to expand into 100 more cities this year.
and some fretted that the change might be percent of corporate customers are based The job of driving cars has not gone away,
just the first step in the computerization of in the United States, but only 20 percent but the way that work is done is changing,
the law. But while machine learning does of the workers are. Opening up a global and the transition is not painless.
well with structured tasks like searching talent competition could make it harder Tim O’Reilly, CEO of O’Reilly Media,
for relevant words, handling documents to earn high wages. has recently been writing about how tech-
similar to others already identified, and
even reconstructing simple summaries
of a baseball game, it is far less adept at Hot Jobs
constructing something like a legal memo, Some of the jobs expected to grow fastest in the U.S. over the next seven years
where persuasiveness can rely on develop-
ing novel arguments, explains economist Number of Median Rate of growth, Likelihood of
jobs, 2012 pay, 2012 2012–2022** being automated
Frank Levy, an MIT professor emeritus
who, with Dana Remus, a professor at INDUSTRIAL-ORGANIZATIONAL 160,200 $69,280 53% low
the University of North Carolina School PSYCHOLOGIST

DATA: BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS; CARL BENEDIKT FREY AND MICHAEL A. OSBORNE,
of Law, is researching computers’ impact
DIAGNOSTIC MEDICAL 110,400 $60,350 46% medium
on the practice of law. SONOGRAPHER

UNIVERSIT Y OF OXFORD. *INCLUDES ALL T YPES OF SECRETARIES. **EXPECTED.

“There’s much less structure in a legal
memo, which is trying to figure out a stra- GENETIC 2,100 $56,800 41% unavailable
tegic approach to an argument,” says Levy, COUNSELOR
who coauthored (with Harvard professor PHYSICIAN’S 86,700 $90,930 38% low
Richard Murnane) an influential book, ASSISTANT
The New Division of Labor, about how
computers are changing employment and INFORMATION SECURITY 75,100 $86,170 37% low
ANALYST
the job market. Adds Levy: “You are put-
ting a premium on innovation.” OCCUPATIONAL 38,600 $48,940 36% low
It’s likely that work done by humans THERAPY AIDE
will increasingly involve innovative think-
ing, flexibility, creativity, and social skills, MEDICAL 3,947,100* $35,330* 36% high
SECRETARY
the things machines don’t do well. In a
recent study on automation from the PHYSICAL 204,200 $79,860 36% low
University of Oxford, researchers tried THERAPIST

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THE FUTURE OF WORK TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

nology can both create new types of jobs for almost 13,000 software engineers, “Across STEM, very few fields are
and improve the quality of work. Mobile 1,568 data scientists, 1,691 programmer declining,” says Bureau of Labor Statistics
and sensor technologies could support analysts, and 4,033 database adminis- economist Michael Wolf.
health workers and help elderly people trators. (Overall, the U.S. economy is Salaries and demand are both rising
stay in their homes, for example, while adding about 230,000 jobs a month.) fast. A UCLA analysis of 2013 data pub-
machine learning could help doctors Depending on the job title, 60 percent lished this June contended that the average
make decisions. to 75 percent were at non-IT companies, tech worker in San Mateo County, which
Some jobs will surely be automated out Chamberlain says.
of existence, but technology has the poten- R e g u l at o r y c h a n ge s h av e a l s o
tial to create new jobs as well.
—Nanette Byrnes
increased the focus on data. The Dodd-
Frank law imposes new reporting
13,000
Number of recent listings for software
requirements on banks. The Affordable engineers on Glassdoor
Care Act is driving hospitals and inde-
Data Analysis pendent doctors toward quality manage-
ment and measurement programs that includes Facebook’s Menlo Park headquar-

Where the depend on computing. With the popu-

lation aging, the U.S. government pre-
ters, is making more than $300,000. The
unemployment rate in San Francisco is 3.5

Tech Jobs Are dicts that 62 percent of new STEM jobs

added through 2022 will be in health
percent. STEM jobs today pay almost dou-
ble the average wage in the economy as a
care. Partners HealthCare in Boston has whole, says economist Sophia Koropeckyj,
Expanding supplies of data and cheap hired more than 600 IT professionals to a managing director at Moody’s Analytics:
processing power will drive demand for implement its new electronic medical “The high compensation of these jobs gives
IT specialists in a broad range of fields. records system. them an outsize role in promoting eco-
In energy, another increasingly data- nomic growth.” —Tim Mullaney
● Jobs in science, technology, engineer- intensive field, predictive analytics soft-
ing, and math (STEM) overpopulate the ware run on a massive scale recommends
U.S. Labor Department list of occupations where to drill and how much water to use Venture Capital
expected to grow the most through 2022: in each well. Even fields that were once
among the 580 occupations the depart-
ment tracks, they make up 14 of the 35
the sole domain of humanities majors, like
advertising, are hunting for technologists On the Edge
fastest-growing.
Fewer than half the available jobs
today. At the Austin ad agency T3, CEO
Gay Gaddis is currently looking for user- of Automation
in categories like data science and pro- experience designers, Android developers,
gramming are in technology industries and data analysts. Five hundred years from now, says
as traditionally defined, according to the Over the next decade, the Bureau of venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson, less
job-hunting site Glassdoor. The rest are Labor Statistics projects, the ranks of than 10 percent of people on the planet
in a range of fields that are benefiting genetic counselors, market research ana- will be doing paid work. And next year?
from the falling cost of data storage and lysts, and information security analysts
the increase in processing speeds that will grow by 30 percent or more. Jobs ● As a founding partner at the venture
capital firm Draper Fisher Jurvetson and
a board member at SpaceX and Tesla
Job growth in fields like computer-directed stock trading and Motors, Steve Jurvetson spends a lot of
electronic medical records is being driven by expanding pools of time thinking about the future, often the
data that can be crunched economically. distant future. One of Elon Musk’s biggest
backers—Jurvetson boasts that he owns
the first Tesla production Model S—he
allows data to be crunched economically, in civil and petroleum engineering will was also a founding investor in Hotmail,
says Andrew Chamberlain, Glassdoor’s grow at the same 20 to 29 percent rate as the precursor to Microsoft Outlook, and
chief economist—fields like computer- systems analysts, and health-care reform, sits on the board of Craig Venter’s Syn-
directed stock trading, electronic med- which seeks to have more work done by thetic Genomics, the constructor of the
ical records, and even more mature workers who make less money than doc- first synthetic cell.
industrial sectors. On Glassdoor, which tors, will help increase employment of His firm claims to have funded compa-
aggregates job postings from across the physician’s assistants and nurse practitio- nies that have created more than 20,000
Internet, there were recently listings ners by 30 percent or more. jobs in the past five years, and to have

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MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM THE FUTURE OF WORK

brought nearly two dozen companies to $1 Which jobs will survive? neurs all the time that think big. Those
billion in value before exiting. ­Jurvetson In the long run, 500 years from now, are the people we should be finding and
spoke to Business Reports senior editor everyone is going to be involved in some funding. Most of them will fail, but the
Nanette Byrnes about why he thinks 90 kind of information or entertainment. ones who succeed will change the world,
percent of people will be unemployed in Nobody on the planet in 500 years will and that is progress.
500 years and how we might transition to do a physically repetitive thing for a living.
that sharply different future. There will be no farmers, there will be no
people working in manufacturing. To me Data Analysis
Are today’s new digital technologies it is an impossibility that people would do
destroying or creating jobs?
I absolutely believe in the near to medium
that. People might do it for fun. You might
have an organic garden in your backyard The Measured
term there is going to be net job creation,
as there always has been. Think of all the
because you love it. Five hundred years
from now I don’t know if even 10 percent Working Man
Uber jobs. The opportunity is not yet fully of people on the planet have a job in the
tapped to, in a sense, distribute [over the sense of being paid to do something. The technology that illuminates worker
Internet] the service economy. The ser- productivity and value also contributes
vice economy is bigger than the goods It’s hard to imagine what that life would to wage inequality, Tyler Cowen argues.
economy, so the online equivalent should be like.
be even bigger and more powerful than It pretty much will be what life was like for ● Discussions of income inequality typi-
the online marketplace for physical goods. most of human history—just without the cally focus on how information technol-
ogy raises the return to skilled labor, or
on the rise of global trade, or perhaps on
“Five hundred years from now, everyone is going to be involved the way that politics skews power toward
in some kind of information or entertainment ... There will be no the rich and well-connected. But there’s
farmers, there will be no people working in manufacturing.” another fundamental driver of income
inequality: the improved measurement
of worker performance. As we get better
Many of these new jobs, including those gruesome servitude. The concept of a “job” at measuring who produces what, the pay
at Uber, are taking shape on what you call is pretty recent. If you go back a few hun- gap between those who make more and
the “edge of automation.” Do you fear dred years, everyone was either a slave or a those who make less grows.
that these jobs might quickly disappear serf, or living off slave or serf labor to pur- Consider journalism. In the “good
as technology keeps evolving? sue science or philosophy or art. We’ll live old days,” no one knew how many peo-
Everything about Uber has been auto- off the production of robots, free to be the ple were reading an article like this one,
mated except for the driver. The billing, next Aristotle or Plato or Newton. Unless or an individual columnist. Today a digi-
the fetching—every part of it is a modern, we’re miserable without doing busy work. tal media company knows exactly how
information-centric company. Interest- many people are reading which articles
ingly, what that means is as soon as auto- Is there some way, some government for how long, and also whether they click
mated vehicles arrive, that driver is easily policies or strategies, to minimize the through to other links. The exactness and
removed. You don’t have to restructure pain of such a dramatic shift? the transparency offered by information
any part of that business. I don’t think that anyone in Washington technology allow us to measure value
What you’re farming out to humans is going to get their head around this and fairly precisely.
today are those things that computers just make meaningful change. No politician The result is that many journalists
barely can’t do. We know from Moore’s has a 50-year horizon. I see zero chance turn out to be not so valuable at all. Their
Law and improvements in computing that that long-term thinking will govern policy. wages fall or they lose their jobs, while
in two or three years [much of this] work the superstar journalists attract more
will be automated. The knock on Silicon Valley today is that Web traffic and become their own global
If a startup or new business venture it’s not taking on big problems either. brands. Some even start their own media
has created a job that involves human I do lament how many investors focus companies, as did Nate Silver at FiveThir-
labor, it probably has done so in a way on all the short-term sugar buzz of some tyEight and Ezra Klein at Vox. In this
that is pretty marginal. Whether you’re a marginal improvement in something— case better measurement boosts income
technology enthusiast or a detractor, the nothing history books are ever going to inequality more or less permanently.
rate at which this will shift is probably be written about. In many cases these are In any organization or division many
going to be unprecedented. There will be quick and easy ways to make money. I do colleagues do good work, but only so
massive dislocation. think there are more and more entrepre- many would be truly difficult to replace.

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 THE FUTURE OF WORK TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

And those are the people who, with better uate individual productivity, even if the close such information voluntarily. Over
measurement of economic value, receive employer has a fairly noisy data set about time schools may offer more information
higher salaries and bonuses. what is going on in the workplace. about their students than just GPAs and
Imagine a situation where a group This analysis, if only in crude forms, letters of recommendation, as statistical
of workers produces some output collec- starts when workers are applying for a analysis improves in its ability to assess
tively. The tendency is to resort to equal job. A significant percentage of bosses their potential.
pay scales, perhaps with some inequal- in America look up an employee’s credit Looking further ahead, and more
ity built in for seniority and other highly score before making a hiring decision. speculatively, employers might request
visible characteristics, such as working Some employers are even using perfor- genetic information from workers. Any-
overtime. Relatively equal pay structures mance in online video games to evaluate one who doesn’t want to turn it over might
help build group solidarity, and in the individual talent. There are also Facebook, be seen as having something to hide, and
meantime the superior producers cannot Twitter, LinkedIn, and numerous other thus this information will spread even if
easily demonstrate their worth to other social-media outlets, all of which do give you may feel that our society doesn’t want
potential employers because no publicly us some clues about character, effort, and to tolerate genetic discrimination. Or per-
observable measurements capture that the quality of a person’s social connec- haps the information can be lifted from a
added value. tions. It’s not hard to imagine a future doorknob or from a cup of coffee during
But as information about productiv- where an individual’s eBay and Uber rat- an interview visit. It’s hard to imagine that
ity improves, the better workers demand ings, among other pieces of information, this valuable source of information will
more and can get it; in fact, bosses will are up for sale in the marketplace. The stay confidential forever, given that most
want to offer more to preëmpt them more reliable job candidates might dis- databases have proved hackable.
from leaving. Workers also T his e xplanation for
stop thinking of themselves growing inequality has some
as bringing the same value to potentially distressing fea-
the table, and that can make tures, but also some upside.
inegalitarian pay structures The upside, quite simply,
less damaging to morale and is that measuring value tends
thus more attractive. to boost productivity, as has
One unfortunate pos- been the case since the very
sibility, or shall I say likeli- beginning of management
hood, is that some workers science. We’re simply able to
may not produce much of do it much better now, and
anything at all. They may be so employers can assign the
major shirkers, or perhaps most productive workers to
they are smart and talented the most suitable tasks. Work-
workers who nonetheless are place incentives can also be
poison for workplace morale. more closely geared to the
Their office scheming takes actual production of value for
away more than their labor the enterprise.
adds. These “zero marginal The downsides are sev-
product” workers, as I have eral. Individuals don’t in fact
labeled them elsewhere, may enjoy being evaluated all the
have a hard time holding time, especially when the
down a job. In the modern results are not always stellar:
world it is harder for them for most people, one piece
to hide behind the labor of of negative feedback out-
others. weighs five pieces of positive
Insofar as workers type feedback. To the extent that
at a computer, everything measurement raises income
they do is logged, recorded, inequality, perhaps it makes
and measured. Surveillance relations among the workers
of workers continues to tenser and less friendly. Life
MIGUEL PORLAN

increase, and statistical anal- under a meritocracy can be

ysis of large data sets makes a little tough, unfriendly, and
it increasingly easy to eval- discouraging, especially for

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those whose morale is easily damaged. that he can complete as many as 10 trips Uber’s not waiting. With the newly set
Privacy in this world will be harder to before noon. up UberChina, the ride-hailing service
come by, and perhaps “second chances” “Right now a lot of people are using plans to expand into 100 Chinese cities, at
will be more difficult to find, given the these services,” says Mr. Dong, 38, who least half with a population over five mil-
permanence of electronic data. We may gave only his last name to avoid jeopar- lion, in the next year. (It currently oper-
end up favoring “goody two-shoes” per- dizing his full-time job. On top of cover- ates in 11 cities, including Tianjin, with
sonality types who were on the straight ing his monthly gas money of about 1,000 an average population of 14 million.) The
and narrow from their earliest years and yuan ($156), he can earn between 800 company also plans to invest more than
disfavor those who rebelled at young ages, yuan ($125) and 1,000 yuan every month seven billion yuan ($1.1 billion) in China
even if those people might end up being by driving for Uber. in 2015.
more creative later on. In China, private Uber drivers are Drivers of China’s 1.37 million tra-
That said, measurement of worker making almost a million trips per day, ditional taxis are already reacting. In
value isn’t going away anytime soon. The according to the CEO of ­Uber. Less than May, dozens of cabbies blocked the roads
real question is not whether we want it
or not, but how to make it better rather
than worse. Ideally we’d have a system Uber is in a legal gray area. Speculation has increased that regulation
where individuals can correct measure- of online taxi reservations may be coming.
ment errors in their records to prevent
injustice and preserve accuracy. We’d also
like a system where individuals are not two years after its launch here, Uber has around the Olympic stadium in Tianjin
tracked and segmented too early, where developed a fierce rivalry with the home- with their cars and lured private-car driv-
outsiders and immigrants receive a fair grown Didi Kuaidi, which reports that its ers to the area using ride-hailing apps.
hearing, where risk taking is rewarded daily private-car requests have tripled to As soon as they arrived, the two groups
rather than punished, and where some three million since May, and engendered started fighting.
degree of privacy, including privacy in the resentment among traditional taxi drivers. “I’m a bit dispirited,” says Lu Lifang,
workplace, remains. Chinese cities in some ways seem 48, a traditional taxi driver. “If the gov-
Obviously, that is a tall order. ripe for a technology-driven transpor- ernment doesn’t regulate the private cars,
I wonder, by the way, if MIT Technol- tation overhaul. The roads are jammed. my profession will disappear sooner or
ogy Review will tell me how many people According to government figures, there later.” She and her fellow cabbies also
clicked on this article. —Tyler Cowen were almost 126 million private vehicles complain about dwindling income. Wang
in China at the end of 2014, a 15.5 per- Hongyong, 47, says he earns about 150
The author is a professor of economics at cent increase from the previous year. The yuan ($23) less per day now than he did
George Mason University. 2014 TomTom Traffic Index shows that a in 2014. “I’m also more tired,” he says. “I
third of the 50 most congested cities in don’t rest in between.”
the world are in China. Other commut-
Mobile Apps ing options are painful, too—during rush
hours a rider in the Beijing subway has
1,000,000
Uber’s Bumpy to wait for several loaded trains to pass
before squeezing in.
Number of trips being made daily by
Uber drivers in China
Ride in China The Chinese State Council has iden-
tified transportation as one of the tradi-
tional industries whose efficiency could be Driving is not a livelihood for most
Chinese Uber drivers are making a improved by online platforms, but Uber Uber drivers. Most, like Mr. Dong, drive
million trips a day, pleasing consumers remains in a legal gray area. Its drivers for extra cash. Xing Gao, who works at
but threatening traditional taxi drivers. are considered private car operators and an insurance company in Tianjin, hasn’t
do not pay all the registration fees, value- picked up any calls on his Uber app since
● Mornings at 5, Mr. Dong, a manager added tax, and income taxes traditional June because the company has dropped
at a livestock farming company in Tian- cabbies do. Uber drivers say they often to nearly zero the subsidy it was paying
jin, logs in to his Uber account. Before he avoid places where there are a lot of police him for each completed trip. In 2014, he
heads off for work at 7, he can make three officers, such as airports and train stations. had a guaranteed 30 yuan ($5) subsidy
to four trips around the city center in his If they are caught, the fines can be as high per trip. “They want to test the bottom
Buick. After he leaves his office at 6 p.m., as 10,000 yuan ($1,564). Recently specu- line of drivers,” says Xing, 32, “just to see
he continues driving until 9 p.m. On week- lation has increased that online taxi reser- how much lower they can go before you
end mornings, he’s in such high demand vations will become a regulated business. quit.” —Yiting Sun

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 THE FUTURE OF WORK TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

HIRED AND FIRED BY ALGORITHM

The cycle of how we find, keep, and lose jobs is increasingly affected by algorithms. Here are some of the data-mining companies aim-
ing to take the “human” out of “human resources.” By Julia Sklar

Step 1 Step 2 Step 3 Step 4

Finding job candidates Tracking employees Quitting Finding the next job
Seattle-based Textio, whose Following billions of dol- According to Visier, a work- Seattle-based Anthology
clients include Microsoft, lars in fines for misconduct force analytics group based (formerly known as Poach-
evaluates job postings to pre- in recent years, many Wall in San Jose, California, able) is like a dating app for
dict if they’re likely to attract Street firms have begun unwanted employee turn- the business world: employ-
the right candidate. For exam- closely tracking workers. over costs the average large ees looking for a change and
ple, phrases such as “top tier” The goal: to both catch and company $31 million a year. businesses looking to hire
and “mission critical” tend to forecast bad behavior. J. P. Visier uses two to three each provide anonymous
turn female candidates off. Morgan has designed a sys- years’ worth of data from cli- information about what they
San Francisco–based Gild tem to use data about things ent companies like Yahoo, are looking for. A direct line
sifts data from sites like like whether individuals ConAgra, and Nissan to build of communication opens
­LinkedIn and Github to tell attend compliance classes to predictive models that it says between users and businesses
customers such as Facebook feed its predictive models of are up to eight times bet- only if their interests match.
and HBO when candidates employee behavior, part of a ter than human intuition at Barely a year old, Anthol-
might be open to a new post. $730 million overhaul of its forecasting which employ- ogy has clients that include
KF4D, an algorithm from management system. Gold- ees are at risk of quitting Amazon, Facebook, IBM,
headhunter Korn Ferry, calcu- man Sachs and Credit Suisse within three months. Each and Netflix. Some 50,000 job
lates the characteristics of an are investors in Digital Rea- employee’s risk score is based seekers are using the app for
effective leader in a given soning System, which ana- on factors like age, salary, free. Anthology has raised
industry and location, a lyzes billions of employee department, and time since $1.8 million in funding.
model employers can then e-mails, phone calls, and last promotion. The company
compare candidates against. online chats to predict and manages data for over two
prevent illegal behavior. million employees.

eyestrain to aching joints become increas- reach 65 can expect to live another 17.9
Tools ingly prevalent. In response, technologists years on average, the National Center for
and ergonomics experts are rethinking Health Statistics calculates, while women

Aging Workers, working conditions.

As recently as 1992, less than 3 per-
can count on 20.5 years. Both figures are
up more than a third from the norms of

New Technology cent of the American workforce consisted

of people age 65 and over. Today that pro-
the 1950s. With so much life still ahead,
high-status workers may not want to be
portion has nearly doubled, according to idle, while low-paid workers often find
The number of workers over 65 is the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, and that meager savings won’t let them quit.
growing fast. Technologists see a big it’s expected to reach 8.3 percent by 2022. At the same time, thanks to the service
business in helping the aging workforce. Most of these 13.5 million older workers sector’s steady ascendancy over manu-
will be between 65 and 74, but nearly 2.6 facturing, many jobs require less physi-
TIBOR KÁRPÁTI

● The American tradition of retirement at million will be 75 and over. cal stamina.
age 65 is crumbling. As older workers stay One reason for this demographic shift While it’s easier to wield a stapler than
on the job longer, challenges ranging from is improved longevity. American men who a rivet gun at age 70, some aspects of office

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MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM THE FUTURE OF WORK

life can still vex people beyond a certain ows and dark zones is just as crucial. That workers how to create slower-moving
age. “Many products are designed with has led to new types of overhead lighting pointers or magnified screen displays by
younger users in mind,” says Sara Czaja, fixtures that bounce most of their light off adjusting their computer’s settings. Now
scientific director of the Center on Aging the ceiling for optimal dispersion, rather Ai Squared, based in Manchester, Ver-
at the University of Miami. “Designers than aiming directly below. mont, has developed software for people
don’t always think about older people.” Older workers also often need more with macular degeneration, a condition
Consider smartphones’ tiny screens. back support, Anderson says, which cre- predominantly affecting older people, in
Office workers who frequently text or check ates problems if sustained use of laptops which a deteriorating retina causes vision
their news feeds and e-mail may switch or tablets tempts people to lean forward loss in the center of the visual field. Its
between near and far vision 100 or more at their desks. One Herman Miller solu- technology can transform display col-
times a day, say researchers at Germany’s tion: a desk with a sliding surface that ors so that people who have trouble with
Carl Zeiss Vision, a leading manufacturer can be drawn nearer to the user, making black type on a white background might
of eyeglass lenses. That’s a particular strain it possible to sit upright and rest against see their e-mail and Web pages as yel-
for older workers with a diminished abil- a chair back while using a mobile device low type on a black background, which is
ity to focus on nearby objects, a condition at close range. often easier to read. “One gentleman uses
that typically begins between ages 40 and At Florida State University, Neil our software to make everything purple
50 and then gets steadily worse. ­Charness, director of the Institute for Suc- on a pink background,” says Ai Squared
To minimize digital eyestrain, Zeiss cessful Longevity, has taken an interest marketing project manager Megan Long.
shifts the reading area in its progressive in the challenges that using a computer “That’s what works best for him.”
lenses higher and closer to the eyes, taking mouse can present for older workers. “I’ve For older workers who stand—rather
into account the position in which people been studying aging for a long time,” he than sit—on the job, specialized floor
hold their smartphones. says, “and now, at age 67, I’ve become one pads better balance the load on ankles,
Another challenge: the eyes of of the people I study.” He is glad that many knees, and hips. These “anti-fatigue mats”
60-year-olds take in only about a third operating systems can be set to allow pro- have been common since the 1980s, but
as much light as those of 20-year-olds, grams and documents to be activated by inventors keep refining the concept. One
because their pupils are smaller and single-clicking; double-clicking can be version, with arrays of hollow rubber cyl-
their lenses cloudier. That necessitates harder for older users. He reduces his inders fused in place under the mat’s sur-
brighter office lighting, with as few shad- own need to scroll down with a mouse by face to provide a mild springiness, was
ows and dark spots as possible, says Ryan turning his computer monitor sideways; patented in 2009. Hospitals are major
­Anderson, director of product and port- eye movements tend to be easier for older buyers. The average age of U.S. nurses
folio strategy at Herman Miller, the office adults than hand movements. climbed to 50 in 2013, according to the
furniture maker based in Zeeland, Michi- Microsoft has for years provided an National Council of State Boards of Nurs-
gan. It’s not enough to blast more lumens online “Guide for Individuals with Age- ing, up from about 47 in 2004.
onto people’s desktops; minimizing shad- Related Impairments,” showing older A broad array of technologies that are
being developed to help those with dis-
abilities could also end up helping other
Swelling Ranks of Older Workers people work longer. Boeing, for example,
By 2022, more than 8 percent of the U.S. workforce will be 65 or older. has a project to help travelers glide
Age: 55–64 65–74 75+ through airports on a driverless cart, and
Carnegie Mellon is working on robot
30 million escorts for those with limited vision. The
U.S. Department of Transportation has DATA: U.S. DEPARTMENT OF LABOR, BUREAU OF LABOR STATISTICS

25 begun an “accessible transportation” ini-

tiative to help people with limited mobil-
20 ity, including older workers. Aaron
Steinfeld, a Carnegie Mellon researcher,
15 is helping to develop Tiramisu Transit, a
crowdsourced system that can share real-
time information about where buses are
10
and which are relatively full or empty.
Such data “can be very important for
5
those with balance issues or who use
wheelchairs or scooters,” S­ teinfeld says.
1992 2002 2012 2022 (est.) —George Anders

8
THE FUTURE OF WORK TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

teleradiology is used in remote areas and has achieved over 80 percent accuracy
Computation and Data Science in overnight urgent care. with certain medical conditions—in the
Technologies beyond digitization, range of a good radiologist. Its education

Technology however, have become increasingly

important to radiology. Among them are
could be sped up by having it study the 30
billion images from hospitals, pharma-

Jobs: Radiology computational medicine and data science.

New applications can reconstruct a
ceutical companies, and clinical research
organizations that the company recently
tumor in 3-D and precisely measure its acquired in its $1 billion purchase of
Digitization didn’t gut the field, and volume as it changes over time. “As a radi- Merge Healthcare.
recent innovations are expanding ologist you cannot just stick to the images Though Brainlab, whose major mar-
radiology beyond interpreting images. anymore; you have to be able to use this kets include North America, is working
software,” says Wildgruber. “Otherwise from a different angle, it too could greatly
● Radiology can date its birth to Decem- you can’t deal with the workload.” alter radiology by better utilizing imag-
ber 22, 1895, when the German physicist The increasing complexity of the work ing—both diagnostic and interventional—
Wilhelm Röntgen shot electromagnetic and the sheer volume of medical images, in the operating room.
radiation through his wife’s left hand to which now include video recordings and A neurosurgeon working in an oper-
produce the world’s first human radio- digital models, have created new chal- ating room outfitted with Brainlab’s
graph, a black-and-white image of a skel- lenges, and new opportunities, for com- image-guided surgery and intraopera-
etal hand wearing a wedding ring. panies like IBM and Germany’s Brainlab. tive CT systems—like those at the Klini-
In recent years, the transition from ana- “A typical emergency room radiologist kum Gross­hadern, in Munich—is able to
log to digital imaging and advances in com- will do 30 to 40 CT studies, with 2,000 visualize tools, anatomy, and radiologic
puter-based medical tools have allowed to 3,000 images per study,” says Tanveer images of diseases overlaid, in real time
radiologists to access imaging results on a Syeda-Mahmood, chief scientist for a through a neurosurgeon’s scope, on the
mobile phone or tablet and analyze them project at IBM that is developing auto- patient’s brain. At the same time, the radi-
immediately. Now, new tools—designed to mated radiology and cardiology tools. ologist can watch live feeds of the surgery
in person or remotely, review images and
video taken at various stages of the opera-
The increasing complexity of the work and the sheer volume of tion, and coördinate treatment.
medical images, which now include video recordings and digital These technological advances enable
models, have created new challenges and new opportunities. radiologists and other physicians to per-
form more kinds of treatments, includ-
ing minimally invasive techniques like
help radiologists deal with a rapidly grow- “You’re easily looking at 100,000 images recanalization of blocked blood vessels
ing amount of data and make faster, more per day.” With all this data—images for and targeted tumor therapies carried out
accurate diagnoses—are changing the job one patient might account for 250 giga- under image guidance.
in other unexpected ways. bytes, says Syeda-Mahmood—a radiolo- This blurring of medical portfolios has
Asked what a radiologist does, most gist is at risk of missing the small begun to create conflicts between once-
people are likely to think of a physician percentage of images crucial to identify-
sitting alone in a dark lab reading x-rays, ing pathologies.
says Moritz W­ ildgruber, a radiologist and
researcher at the Klinikum Rechts der
IBM, which developed the Watson
technology that triumphed on Jeopardy!,
250 gigabytes
Amount of data one patient’s medical
Isar hospital in Munich, Germany. At one is testing whether similar computer-­based
images might contain
time digital imaging technology seemed reasoning, machine learning, and analyti-
like a potential threat to the profession. cal problem solving modeled on human
Some feared that with “teleradiology,” cognition could ameliorate some of these distinct medical specialties. “If you want
radiographs could be efficiently sent off- issues. According to the company, early to open an occluded artery with a stent,”
site to be read assembly-line-style. work has demonstrated that the system says Wildgruber, “the radiologist can do
As with many technological shifts, the can autonomously learn what a pathology it, the vascular surgeon can do it, the car-
reality has been more tempered. In part looks like—say, an abnormal narrowing diologist can do it.” So whom do you go to
because of strict regulations and liability in a coronary artery—and automatically when you arrive at the hospital for such
issues limiting where a scan can be read alert the radiologist to the most important a treatment? Today the answer, surpris-
and by whom, radiology has not been out- images for a given patient. ingly, may come down to which depart-
sourced wholesale. On-site hospital radi- The system is still learning, but ment is available when you walk in.
ology groups remain important, though Syeda-Mahmood says that in testing it —Russ Juskalian

9
MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM THE FUTURE OF WORK

Guse’s cite surveys finding that 53 mil- more than a billion dollars a year. Build-
Online Marketplaces lion Americans do some freelance work ing on the technologies underlying social
today, or the fact that staffing companies matchmaking sites and the analytical

Online and have seen a growth in revenue. Compa-

nies that operate online marketplaces for
recommendation engines of retailers like
Amazon, the company is trying to cut the

Self-Employed freelancers include Upwork, TaskRab-

bit, Uber, and Amazon Home Services.
average time it takes to find someone for a
project from three days to three minutes.
Many others, from Skype to Slack, facili- CEO ­Stephane Kasriel, who oversees a
New technologies give employers tate remote work and help contractors run team of 300 employees and 700 freelanc-
access to a world of workers while their businesses. ers, says key challenges have included get-
offering freelancers more ways to build The number of self-employed Ameri- ting the network big enough to make such
a career. cans, as tracked by the government, actu- rapid connections possible and building
ally “hasn’t moved in two decades,” says an algorithm smart enough to start nar-
● Recently Megan Guse has been field- Lawrence Mishel, president of the Eco- rowing a would-be employer’s search on
ing questions from her former classmates nomic Policy Institute. As a percentage of the basis of just a few questions.
about the atypical path she has taken since total employment, it has dropped. Depend- There are particular challenges in
graduating from the University of Illinois ing on whether you include part-time building such an algorithm for freelance
law school. Three and a half years ago, workers, the self-employed, and others, work. There’s no universally accepted
after finishing a fellowship in the Cham- the size of the U.S. contingent workforce taxonomy of skills. Also, freelancers are
paign County state’s attorney’s office, Guse is either as small as less than 5 percent of sometimes simply not available—the best
didn’t take the expected next step of join- the total or as large as 33 percent. candidate might currently be on a beach
ing a law firm or getting a government And while those people have more somewhere and not interested in work.
job. Instead she became an independent flexibility and may be able to access a A few months ago, no jobs were being
contractor. She does legal work, mostly broader range of work in today’s digital filled in three minutes on Upwork’s site;
on contracts, for a company called Ver- economy, there are downsides as well. A now a small number are. Still, searches
sata, which specializes in acquiring and recent study of the contingent workforce can take time in fields where talent is
restructuring struggling software com-
panies. Headquartered in Austin, Texas,
Versata operates globally with almost no Freelancing offers flexibility and access to a range of work, but
full-time employees. Like Guse, most of downsides include lower satisfaction and earnings, fewer worker
its workers are contractors. protections and benefits, and job instability.
“I think at first a lot of people viewed it
as a questionable move,” says Guse. Now,
after many of her classmates have begun by the U.S. Government Accountability scarce and in demand, like mobile soft-
to burn out on the long hours expected of Office listed lower satisfaction and earn- ware development, and for jobs that carry
young lawyers at big firms, “I have sensed ings, fewer protections and benefits, and a high price tag (projects on the site can
a little envy sometimes,” she says. job instability as some of the disadvan- bill as much as $100,000, though most
She has little job security, must rely tages freelance workers face. Workers’ are in the $100 to $1,000 range).
on her husband’s employer for health advocates worry that employers will take While 50 percent of the jobs on the
benefits, and does not make the salary advantage of the growing digital freelance platform come from U.S.-based compa-
she would at a large firm. But she says infrastructure to shift more work off the nies, only 20 percent are filled by U.S.
her earnings are comparable to what payroll and more risk onto workers. freelancers. Other workers come from
she could make as an in-house lawyer These online freelance marketplaces India, Eastern Europe, the Philippines,
at a small company. And she’s gotten are a global clearinghouse for workers. and potentially almost anywhere.
opportunities to branch out into differ- James Manyika, a director of the research Participants in this global freelance
ent types of law, including some recent arm of the consulting firm McKinsey, says pool wrote and still maintain the software
work on mergers and acquisitions that she they could help find work for the 30 to 45 that underlies Brecht Palombo’s business,
wouldn’t have done in a more traditional percent of the working-age population Distressed Pro, a debt database that he
setting. Plus, she works from home, so it worldwide (200 million people) currently sells to investors. He has used freelance
was easy to move when her husband’s lat- either not active at all in the workforce, software developers from overseas ever
est job posting took them from Texas to unemployed, or working part time. since the business launched in 2009,
Connecticut. Upwork, the largest of these online though he needed time to learn the vari-
Those who believe we are headed to marketplaces, has 2.5 million U.S. free- ous working styles in different markets.
a future of contract-based careers like lancers. Its contractors collectively earn Programmers from the Philippines, for

10
 THE FUTURE OF WORK TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

example, do business in a more Ameri- has created a simple new line of work for clashes between hosts and guests peri-
canized way than those in many parts of 1.1 million people worldwide: renting out odically make headlines, though Airbnb
Southeast Asia, Palombo says, but they extra rooms for a few days at a time via says its vetting systems are designed to
have had challenges like an unreliable Airbnb’s home-sharing site. avoid this. City governments want Airbnb
power grid and bad weather. The Bugays have worked this new to collect hotel taxes, which the company
Eventually Palombo began trying to calling to perfection. They are among generally is willing to do, while affordable-
build relationships with a small group of Airbnb’s most active hosts, renting so con- housing advocates sometimes argue that
contractors, rather than moving from one sistently that their spare bedrooms enjoy the rise of Airbnb hosting is making life
to another according to price. “Now I have a remarkable 92 percent occupancy rate. harder for renters. A San Francisco refer-
regular guys who get paid like a salary,” They hardly need to do any marketing endum scheduled for November will test
he says. “They are free to work on other themselves; testimonials from more than whether or not voters want to clamp down
things, but I do offer them some security 170 previous guests keep sending new vis- on ­Airbnb’s most active hosts.
and stability.” He pays experts $2,000 a itors their way. All told, the Bugays calcu-
month for work that would cost $8,000 to late that they are booking about $90,000

81%
$15,000 a month if he hired experienced a year in rental revenue.
developers in the U.S., he says. Airbnb’s software is so efficient at
Beyond managing a remote workforce organizing the rental calendar that Bugay Proportion of hosts who rent
on Upwork, Palombo has set up a virtual figures it takes only about five hours a rooms in their primary residence
work system. He uses Slack to commu- week for him and his wife to run their

52%
nicate, schedule and hold meetings, and rental business. A few minutes of e-mail
track assignments. All the work is done correspondence, a little socializing with
using Google programs and is stored in guests over meals and card games, a Proportion of hosts who have
the cloud, where it is safe in the event of a round of laundry between visitors, and— low to moderate income
lost laptop or hardware mishap. He orga- voilà—everything is ready for the cycle
nizes assignments and tasks on Trello.
All this has allowed Palombo himself
to continue. If guests don’t speak much
English, he says, “we use Google Translate 48%
Proportion of host income used to pay
more freedom. He and his wife and three to take care of breakfast requests or some
children have spent more than a year trav- advice about sights to see.” for household expenses like rent
eling the U.S. in an RV, while he works a San Francisco–based Airbnb is not
few hours a day from the road or in a Star- the only company providing an online
bucks. The arrangement hasn’t hurt his marketplace for hotel-style rentals in peo- When mass adoption of Internet con-
business, which he says has grown about ple’s homes. Other major players include nectivity took hold in the late 1990s, the
28 percent over the last six months. VRBO, HomeAway, and FlipKey. But travel industry was often cited as an area
—Nanette Byrnes Airbnb, which began as an impromptu where the efficiencies afforded by new
online listing by three housemates in technology were squeezing out old jobs.
2008, has grown to be the category leader. Travel agents gave way to do-it-yourself
Online Marketplaces It operates in 34,000 cities around the online reservations; guidebooks lost their
world and has rented to more than 40 appeal in the face of competition from

The Homeowner million guests to date. This year private

investors helped fund Airbnb’s further
YouTube videos and TripAdvisor reviews.
But as thrifty travelers make use of Airbnb

as Hotelier growth at a level that implied a valua-

tion of $26 billion for the company. That’s
and similar services, job cuts at hotels
may be offset by opportunities in the new
more than long-established hotel chains informal sector.
For some, home-sharing sites like such as Hilton and Marriott command in Airbnb may even be creating a new
Airbnb have opened up an unexpected public stock markets. entrepreneurial ecosystem. For hosts who
second profession. Not everyone makes as much money don’t want to be bothered with e-mailing
on Airbnb as the Bugays: fewer than 5 confirmation details to their guests (or
● Greg Bugay and his wife, Lorraine, live percent of its lodging providers qualify putting fresh linen on the bed), services
in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, just a short as “super hosts.” Typical property own- such as Pillow, a startup trying to help
distance from the Atlantic Ocean. They ers in cities such as London or Sydney, owners manage their properties, have
are empty nesters with more space than Australia, earn slightly less than $5,000 sprung up. These companies put more
they need in their duplex. A decade ago, a year, Airbnb calculates, by renting out a people to work, in maid service and cleri-
DATA: AIRBNB

extra bedrooms in tourist havens often sat room or two intermittently. And the busi- cal support, in return for 15 percent of
idle. No more. Today, digital connectivity ness is not without controversy. Violent booking revenue. —George Anders

11
MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM THE FUTURE OF WORK

networked work will need to strategi-

Digital Technology cally choose the platforms where they Outside Reading
can most effectively build their reputa-

Freelancers on tion and customer base.

The benefits that come with a steady
Rise of the Robots:
Technology and the Threat
the Network job are offered only piecemeal in the
this world of freelance platforms, so
of a Jobless Future
by Martin Ford
networked workers need to be insured Basic Books, May 2015
New infrastructure based on digital against risks associated with participa-
technology is changing the way we tion in alternative markets. For exam- A Silicon Valley entrepreneur discusses
work, creating new jobs and requiring ple, hosts on Airbnb run the risk that how advances in robotics could wipe out
workers to develop different skills. their apartment will be trashed by a jobs and deepen inequality.
traveler. Independent workers need
● A large number of workers are moving mechanisms for learning and improve- The Second Machine Age:
from working for organizations to free- ment. To provide them, platforms could Work, Progress, and Prosperity in
lancing on job networks. Platforms like invest in community management prac- a Time of Brilliant Technologies
UpWork, Fiverr, and Freelancer allow tices and offer ongoing feedback to users by Erik Brynjolfsson and
freelancers to find a market for their on the basis of past interactions. Andrew McAfee
services. Others are more specialized: Most important, today’s networked W. W. Norton, January 2014
Dribbble and 99Designs allow design- work environment doesn’t offer the sta-
ers to find new work, Clarity and Experfy bility or health-care benefits of a tradi- In this New York Times best-seller, two
cultivate high-end specialists, and Zaarly tional job: it’s not governed by the same leading thinkers at MIT discuss how
and TaskRabbit match workers to lower- sort of social contract. Regulators must industries will have to adapt to a world
end work. Meetup gives freelancers a way create policies to address the issues where computers can do many jobs
to network with peers and learn from workers face in this new environment. better than humans can.
them, while Twitter, Medium, Quora, and Third parties not associated with spe-
Machines of Loving Grace:
The Quest for Common Ground
The more easily a form of work is commoditized, the more Between Humans and Robots
the balance of power will shift away from the worker and by John Markoff
toward the platform. Ecco, August 2015

Pulitzer Prize–winning science writer

­ inkedIn enable these independent work-
L cific platforms could also develop new John Markoff details the history of
ers to build a brand and increase their businesses offering these services to net- interactions between humans and robots.
influence in the market. worked workers, to substitute for what
As they grow, these platforms will traditional employers once provided. “Who Will Own the Robots?”
exert greater control over the career The careers of the past depended by David Rotman
prospects and livelihood of the workers on our ability to leverage relationships MIT Technology Review,
who participate. The more easily a form in offline professional networks. The July/August 2015
of work is commoditized, the more the careers of the future will depend on our
balance of power will shift away from the ability to leverage online networked In this cover story, MIT Technology
worker and toward the platform. A driver platforms. Workers’ reputation on Review editor David Rotman explores
on Uber may be more replaceable or inter- these labor platforms, and their ability how increased automation is affecting
changeable with counterparts than a host to build a business across multiple plat- jobs and how the economic benefits of
on Airbnb or a seller on Etsy. Etsy and forms without becoming overtly depen- technology can be more fairly shared.
Airbnb have invested in the community of dent on one, will determine success in
producers on their platforms, in recogni- the age of networked work. The Glass Cage:
tion of their value to consumers. Similarly, —Sangeet Paul Choudary Automation and Us
Dribbble showcases designers, giving by Nicholas Carr
them a way to build their own brand and The author, founder of Platform W. W. Norton, September 2014
find high-end work, while 99Designs Thinking Labs, thanks Geoffrey Parker
requires designers to compete with each and Marshall Van Alstyne for ideas A best-selling author looks at how
other for projects. Individuals taking up contributed to this article. automation is affecting several facets of

12
THE FUTURE OF WORK TECHNOLOGYREVIEW.COM MIT TECHNOLOGY REVIEW

our lives, including cars, wearables, and forecast the jobs of the future, they
factory robots. World Robotics: Industrial Robots conclude that work will increasingly
2014, Executive Summary focus on factors that cannot be
Virtually Human: International Federation of Robotics, automated, including social interaction
The Promise—and the Peril— 2014 and empathy, creativity, and skill.
of Digital Immortality
by Martine Rothblatt An oft-cited report on industrial robot “A World without Work”
St. Martin’s Press, September 2014 sales. By Derek Thompson
The Atlantic, July/August 2015
Entrepreneur Martine Rothblatt looks at “Technology and Inequality”  
what could happen if software becomes by David Rotman For centuries, experts have predicted
part of our brains. MIT Technology Review, that machines would make workers
November/December 2014 obsolete. If that moment has finally
Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, arrived, could it be a good thing?
Strategies The gap between the very rich and poor
by Nick Bostrom is especially wide in Silicon Valley. David
Oxford University Press, September 2014 Rotman attempts to find out how much
technology has to do with it.
Can humans stay in control when Calendar
machines become smarter than we are? Fastest Declining Occupations,
Next: Economy
Philosopher Nick Bostrom explores 2012 and projected 2022
November 12–13, 2015
questions like these in this book, Employment Statistics Program, U.S. San Francisco
recommended by both Bill Gates and Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor http://conferences.oreilly.com/next-economy
Elon Musk. Statistics, December 2013
Robotics Alley Conference & Expo
December 1–2, 2015
The Future of Employment: U.S. government data shows which jobs
Minneapolis
How Susceptible Are Jobs to are expected to decline the most quickly http://roboticsalley.org/
Computerisation? over the next decade.
by Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. 11th ACM/IEEE International Conference on
Osborne Learning by Doing: The Real Human-Robot Interaction (HR1 2016)
March 7–10, 2016
University of Oxford, September 2013 Connection between Innovation,
Christchurch, New Zealand
Wages, and Wealth http://humanrobotinteraction.org/2016/
This report looks at how vulnerable By James Bessen
certain workers are to being replaced by Yale University Press, 2015 ICRA 2016: IEEE International Conference on
robots.   Robotics and Automation
May 16–21, 2016
Much of the value from innovations
Stockholm, Sweden
“Will Your Job Be Done by a comes over time as they are www.icra2016.org
Machine?” implemented, the author argues, and
by Quoctrung Bui while technology transforms work in RoboBusiness Europe
Planet Money, May 2015 profound ways, it can take a long time June 1–3, 2016
Odense, Denmark
for workers and society to fully adapt.  
www.robobusiness.eu/rb/
NPR has turned the above-mentioned
Oxford study into an interactive graphic “Technology and People: The IEEE CASE 2016
that readers can use to determine the Great Job Creating Machine” August 21–25, 2016
likelihood of losing their job to a robot. Ian Stewart, Debapratim De, and Fort Worth, Texas
http://sites.ieee.org/case-2016/
Alex Cole
AI, Robotics, and the Future Deloitte, December 2014 IROS 2016
of Jobs   October 9–14, 2016
by Aaron Smith and Janna Anderson This study of employment data from Daejeon, Korea
Pew Research Center, August 2014 England and Wales over the last 140 www.iros2016.org
years concludes that when machines
Automate
This report from a prominent think tank replace workers, the result is faster April 3–6, 2017
explores how the rise of robots could growth and rising overall employment. Chicago
affect humans’ jobs. Though the authors don’t attempt to www.autmateshow.com

13
MIT INDUSTRIAL LIAISON PROGRAM
JAN/FEB 2016 ILP.MIT.EDU BUSINESS REPORT — WORK, JOBS, EMPLOYMENT

MIT RESEARCH

Work, Jobs, Employment

RESEARCH SURVEY
Work, Jobs, Employment
Future of work * digital economy * demographics * leadership * labor ...

The following is a sample of MIT research in areas related to work, jobs, employ-
ment. A report on this same topic by MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program is available
to request at the ILP website (Resources/Publications section) at http://ilp.mit.edu/
webpub.jsp?brResearch=Y .

For a complete list of research reports by the MIT Industrial Liaison Program, please
see the ILP website (Resources/Publications section) at http://ilp.mit.edu/webpub.
jsp?brResearch=Y or contact the Industrial Liaison Officer for your company.

• WORK, JOBS, EMPLOYMENT - 35 pages (PDF)

PROGRAMS / INITIATIVES
than in 1997, and fewer people have jobs. employment relationships remain tailored
MIT Initiative on the Digital Rapid advances in technology are creating to the industrial economy of the past. The
unprecedented benefits and efficiencies, central research challenge of our generation
Economy (IDE)
but there is no economic law that says is to identify how to best update our poli-
Director: Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson, everyone, or even a majority of people, cies, institutions, and workplace practices
http://digital.mit.edu/erik/index.html will share in these gains. to fit the needs of modern working families,
http://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/publications. Technology is advancing quickly, but employers, and a global, knowledge-driven
php?in_spseqno=22672 organizations and skills advance slowly. economy.”
Co-Director: Andrew McAfee What’s more, the gap between swiftly This statement captures the perspective
http://andrewmcafee.org/blog/ evolving technology and the slower pace faculty and students at the MIT Institute for
of human development will grow rapidly Work and Employment Research (IWER)
http://mitsloan.mit.edu/ide//
in the coming decades, as exponential bring to their research, teaching, and pub-
The Initiative on the Digital Econ- improvements in artificial intelligence, lic service. We conduct research and educa-
omy (IDE) is a major effort focused on robotics, networks, analytics, and digitiza- tional activities on the broad range of work,
the impact of digital technology on busi- tion affect more and more of the economy employment, and labor market issues and
nesses, the economy, and society. Drawing and society. Inventing effective organiza- policies. Our goals are to create and
on MIT Sloan’s strengths in technology tions and institutions for the digital econ- advance knowledge on these topics, to
and innovation, its internationally rec- omy is the grand challenge for our time, educate and train the next generation of
ognized faculty, and more than a decade and for MIT in particular. academic leaders in our field, and to make
of research and partnership with MIT positive contribu-tions to improving the
Sloan’s Center for Digital Business, the public policies, orga-nizational practices,
IDE is analyzing the broad sociological Institute for Work and and institutions that shape the world of
changes brought about by the advance work.IWER was first established as the MIT
Employment Research
and spread of digital technology. Industrial Relations Section in 1937. In
While digital technologies are rapidly
(IWER) 1998 we adopted the new IWER name to
transforming both business practices and Prof. Thomas A. Kochan and Prof. Paul better reflect the breadth of research on
societies and are integral to the innova- Osterman work and employment we carry out.
tion-driven economies of the future, http://mitsloan.mit.edu/iwer/ IWER is housed within the MIT Sloan
they are also the core driver of the great School of Management and has affiliated
economic paradox of our time. On one “The workforce, nature of work, and faculty from Sloan and the Departments
hand, productivity, wealth, and profits are the economy have all changed dramati- of Economics, Political Science, Anthro-
each at record highs; on the other hand, cally in recent years, while the institu- pology, Urban Studies and Planning, and
the median worker in America is poorer tions and policies governing work and the Engineering Systems Division. Within

14
 MIT INDUSTRIAL LIAISON PROGRAM
BUSINESS REPORT — WORK, JOBS, EMPLOYMENT ILP.MIT.EDU JAN/FEB 2016

Sloan IWER Faculty are part of the Work The knowledge created through this pro- Digital Productivity Special
and Organizational Studies Group. cess is then disseminated through a vari- Interest Group
These diverse affiliations and the close ety of means, including daylong research MIT Center for Digital
working relationships with colleagues workshops; a 2-day annual sponsor con-
Business
across the campus support a highly inter- ference, bi-weekly lunch seminars, site
disciplinary and rigorous PhD program, a visits, and working papers and other pub- Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson, MIT Sloan School of
weekly research seminar, and a wide array lications. These activities are designed to Management, Center for Digital Business
of research projects. help our faculty, students and sponsors Dr. Andrew McAfee, MIT Sloan School,
understand the challenges and opportuni- Center for Digital Business
ties offered by Digital Business. Prof. Geoffrey Parker, MIT Sloan School and
Tulane University
Prof. Marshall Van Alstyne, MIT Sloan
School and Boston University School of
LABS, CENTERS, GROUPS Management
MIT Leadership Center Dr. George Westerman, MIT Sloan School,
Center for Digital Business
MIT Center for Digital Faculty Director: Prof. Deborah Ancona
Business Executive Director: Hal Gregersen http://digital.mit.edu/research/Productivity.
http://leadership.mit.edu/ html
Director: Prof. Erik Brynjolfsson https://www.facebook.com/MITSloan
http://digital.mit.edu/erik/index.html
The projects in this group are focused
Associate Director: Andrew McAfee The MIT Leadership Center, founded on understanding how business processes,
in 2005, is a resource for scholars and organizational structures and corporate
http://andrewmcafee.org/blog/
practitioners worldwide. Through culture can be reshaped using information
http://digital.mit.edu/
research, education, and convening con- and communication technologies to mea-
versations we strengthen the capacity of surably increase business performance.
The MIT Sloan School of Manage- individuals and organizations to develop Faculty have expertise in economics, com-
ment created the MIT Center for Digital innovative solutions to complex problems puter science, information systems, orga-
Business (formerly the Center for eBusi- and develop the next generation of lead- nizational studies,strategy, accounting,
ness at MIT) as a research partnership ers worldwide. Our mission is to develop finance, and coordination science.
with industry to provide leadership for innovative leaders who solve the world’s
faculty, students, and sponsors interested most challenging problems.
in Internet-enabled business. The results We achieve our mission through three
of our applied research are transforming primary strategies:
digital business. • We undertake cutting-edge research and
The center’s mission is to be the lead- curriculum development about leader-
ing source of innovation, knowledge cre- ship and leadership development, both
ation, dissemination and utilization, in within and across MIT and through col-
management theory and practice for Digi- laborations with our alumni and part-
tal Business. Toward this end, we have ners.
established a large-scale research pro- • We foster an inclusive conversation that
gram to investigate the latest trends and addresses the benefits and challenges of
techniques in Digital Business. The core leadership in today’s globally connected
of this program is the custom matching context. We inspire others to make sense
of sponsor companies with MIT faculty of the world around them, ask what does
to form research teams that address issues it take to lead right now, and what will it
that are relevant to both industry and aca- take to lead into the future?
demia. This approach to applying rigorous • We encourage interdisciplinary exchange
research methodologies to solve some of in order to bridge the gap between schol-
industry’s most relevant questions creates arship and practice.
generalizable knowledge that is valuable
not only to the specific company involved,
but to all our understandings of how to
use digital technologies most effectively.

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MIT INDUSTRIAL LIAISON PROGRAM
JAN/FEB 2016 ILP.MIT.EDU BUSINESS REPORT — WORK, JOBS, EMPLOYMENT

PROJECTS, PAPERS Why Are There Still So Young, Restless and

Many Jobs? The History Creative: Openness to
Redesigning, redefining and Future of Workplace Disruption and Creative
work Automation Innovations
SJ Correll, EL Kelly, LT O’Connor, JC David H. Autor, Journal of Economic Daron Acemoglu, Ufuk Akcigit, Murat Alp
Williams, Work and Occupations 41 (1), 2014, Perspectives, 29(3), Summer 2015, 3-30, Celik, July 2015
3-17, doi: 10.1177/0730888413515250 DOI: 10.1257/jep.29.3.3 http://economics.mit.edu/files/10656
http://wox.sagepub.com/content/41/1/3.short http://economics.mit.edu/files/10865
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles. Prof. Daron Acemoglu, Elizabeth and James
php?doi=10.1257/jep.29.3.3 Killian Professor of Economics,
Prof. Erin Kelly, Professor of Work and http://economics.mit.edu/faculty/acemoglu
Organization Studies, Institute for Work and Prof. David Autor, Professor of Economics
Employment Research http://economics.mit.edu/faculty/dautor
http://mitsloan.mit.edu/faculty/detail. This paper argues that openness
php?in_spseqno=106235 to new, unconventional and disruptive
In this essay, I begin by identifying the ideas has a first-order impact on cre-
reasons that automation has not wiped ative innovations—innovations that
The demands of today’s workplace— out a majority of jobs over the decades break new ground in terms of knowledge
long hours, constant availability, self- and centuries. Automation does indeed creation. After presenting a motivating
sacrificial dedication—do not match the substitute for labor—as it is typically model focusing on the choice between
needs of today’s workforce, where workers intended to do. However, automation also incremental and radical innovation, and
struggle to reconcile competing caregiv- complements labor, raises output in ways on how managers of different ages and
ing and workplace demands. This mis- that leads to higher demand for labor, human capital are sorted across different
match has negative consequences for and interacts with adjustments in labor forms with different degrees of openness
gender equality and workers’ health. Here, supply. Journalists and even expert com- to disruption, we provide firm-level, pat-
the authors put forth a call to action: to mentators tend to overstate the extent of ent-level and cross-country evidence con-
redesign work to better meet the needs of machine substitution for human labor sistent with this pattern. Our measures of
today’s workforce and to redefine success- and ignore the strong complementari- creative innovations proxy for innovation
ful work. The authors propose two ave- ties between automation and labor that quality (average number of citations per
nues for future research to achieve these increase productivity, raise earnings, and patent) and creativity (fraction of super-
goals: research that (a) builds a more rig- augment demand for labor. Changes in star innovators, the likelihood of a very
orous business case for work redesign/ technology do alter the types of jobs avail- high number of citations, and generality
redefinition and (b) exposes the underly- able and what those jobs pay. In the last of patents). Our main proxy for openness
ing gender and class dynamics of current few decades, one noticeable change has to disruption is the age of the manager—
work arrangements. been a “polarization” of the labor market, based on the idea that only companies
in which wage gains went disproportion- or societies open to such disruption will
ately to those at the top and at the bottom allow the young to rise up within the hier-
of the income and skill distribution, not archy. Using this proxy at the firm, patent
to those in the middle; however, I also and country level, we present robust evi-
argue, this polarization is unlikely to con- dence that openness to disruption is asso-
tinue very far into future. The final section ciated with more creative innovations, but
of this paper reflects on how recent and we also show that once the effect of the
future advances in artificial intelligence sorting of young managers to firms that
and robotics should shape our thinking are more open to disruption is factored
about the likely trajectory of occupational in, the (causal) impact of manager age on
change and employment growth. I argue creative innovations is small.
that the interplay between machine and
human comparative advantage allows
computers to substitute for workers in
performing routine, codifiable tasks while
amplifying the comparative advantage
of workers in supplying problem-solving
skills, adaptability, and creativity.

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