David Autor on the Future of Work and Polanyi's Paradox

David Autor talks with host Russ Roberts about the future of work and the role that automation and smart machines might play in the workforce. He stresses the importance of Polanyi's insight that many of the things we know and understand cannot be easily written down or communicated. Those kinds of tacit knowledge will be difficult for smart machines to access and use. In addition, Autor argues that fundamentally, the gains from machine productivity will accrue to humans. The conversation closes with a discussion of the distributional implications of a world with a vastly larger role for smart machines.