Humans need to take charge of their robots

"It is a matter of choice how much we get to invest in replacing workers and how much in complementing workers," said Daron Acemoglu, an influential scholar on automation at MIT. The big picture: In a way, we are in a heyday for employment. In the U.S., the jobless rate has been near a half-century low at or below 4% for more than a year. Almost anyone who wants a job -- including the stubbornly unemployed, felony convicts and workers with a drug record -- can get one. Wages, too, have been climbing beyond the rate of inflation: Since 2015, workers have carved out real pay increases every month on average, a change from the prior decade, when they routinely lost money to inflation, according to government data.