MIT prez issues “call to action” on balancing robotic automation with human work skills

The president of MIT says a wave of industrial automation is about to sweep over society, and it is up to the developers and deployers of that technology to find a way to balance the rise of robots with the preservation of human jobs.

“Automation will transform our work, our lives, our society,” L. Rafael Reif, president of Cambridge, Mass.-based Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), wrote in an editorial today in The Boston Globe. “Whether the outcome is inclusive or exclusive, fair or laissez-faire, is up to us.”

Faced with a culture where many Americans are worried that widespread technology in the workplace may trigger economic inequality or unemployment, business leaders must strike a balance between its costs and benefits, he said.

“Those of us leading and benefitting from the technology revolution must lead the way. This is not someone else’s problem; it is a call to action,” said Reif. “It is up to those of us advancing new technologies to help make certain that they do wind up damaging the society we intend them to serve."

One way to provide new skills for people whose jobs were replaced by technology is to provide “continuous uptraining,” a process that allows employees to acquire fresh skills every week, month, or year, Reif said. An example of that approach is the online “MicroMasters” course that MIT itself provides in supply chain management, as well as other topics, he said.

Some of Reif’s additional strategies for “reinventing the future of work” include:

• ensuring every graduate is computationally literate,
• encouraging students to design technology solutions that improve other human values than just efficiency,
• creating machines that make humans more effective instead of obsolete, and
• reinvesting some of the profits achieved through automation in job development.