Will artificial intelligence be as important an innovation as technologists have predicted? Will machine learning improve productivity? Will it exacerbate inequality? And how can policymakers best promote innovation in this field while preparing the labor force for its widespread adoption? On today’s Political Economy, Erik Brynjolfsson and I discuss these questions, and many more.

Erik is a professor at the MIT Sloan School of Management, Director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, Director of the MIT Center for Digital Business, and a research associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research. He’s also the author of several books, including Machine Platform Crowd: Harnessing our Digital Future (2017) and The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies (2014), both of which he co-authored with Andrew McAfee.

Learn more: Paul Vigna: How blockchain could change the world | Michael Strain: The American Dream is not dead | Thomas Philippon: How America gave up on free markets

 

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