The False Choice Between Automation and Jobs

We live in a world where productivity, a key pillar of long-term economic growth, has crumbled. In the United States, Europe, and other advanced economies, productivity growth has slowed so drastically in the past decade that economists debate whether we have entered a new era of stagnation--and this at a time when we need productivity growth more than ever to sustain growth, as working populations in countries from Germany to Japan age and shrink. Now comes potential help, in the form of advanced robotics, machine learning, and artificial intelligence, which can already outperform humans in a range of activities, from lip-reading to analyzing X-rays. The performance benefits for companies are compelling and not just (or even mainly) in terms of reducing labor costs: automation can also bring whole new business models, and improvements that go beyond human capabilities, such as increasing throughput and quality and raising the speed of responses in a variety of industries. Automation will give the global economy that much-needed productivity boost, even as it enables us to tackle societal "moonshots" such as curing disease or contributing solutions to the climate change challenge.