‘Robot Overlords’ Job-Stealing Exaggerated: Jackson Hole Paper

Robots and computers don’t steal as many jobs as some believe, and automation actually benefits many workers, Massachusetts Institute of Technology Professor David Autor will say in a presentation at a Federal Reserve conference.

A key reason humans aren’t obsolete yet is that simple tasks such as visually identifying a chair, which any child can do, aren’t so easy for engineers to teach to computers, Autor said in a paper prepared for presentation today at the Kansas City Fed’s annual symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming.