Working, Learning, and Earning in the Age of Intelligent Machines: Considering the Implications of Computation Intensive Automation, Big Data, and Platforms

AI

Bringing together scholars from engineering, business, and other domains, this Matrix Prospecting Team will develop a research agenda focused on understanding the impact of artificial intelligence on labor and the economy. “The objective is classic and enduring: sustain the equitable growth of employment and productivity to assure expanding real incomes of the community,” the researchers explained in their proposal. “A digital era strategy for sustained productivity growth and good jobs is required. Can the information and communication technology (IcT) transformation generate productivity growth sufficient to sustain real rising incomes? Or, will IcT innovation with platform technologies, big data, and computation intensive automation, including AI and machine learning, displace work and workers? The project’s intent is to understand and shape the digital revolution, to assure productivity growth and good jobs with rising real incomes in an equitable community.” The team hopes to develop a “campus-wide Berkeley centered research agenda” and “make Berkeley a center of thought and debate” on this globally important question.

 

 

Image Credit: Gwydion M Williams, Creative Commons via Flickr