Module 9: Automation and Employment
Mandatory Watching - videos with quizzes - finish before 11 am, Tuesday, July 21
- 9.1 — Lecture: The Past - and Future? - of Exponential Economic Growth, 27 minutes (May 11, 2026)
- 9.2 — Lecture: The Impact of Automation on Employment, 47 minutes (May 12, 2026)
- 9.3 — Kurzgesagt - Why Automation is Different This Time, 11 minutes (June 8, 2017)
- 9.4 — Vox - The Debate about the Future of Work, Explained, 9 minutes (Nov. 13, 2017)
- 9.5 — Wendover Productions, The Terrifying Efficiency of Drone Warfare, 23 minutes (Aug. 8, 2024)
Written assignment - finish before end of Tuesday, July 21, give feedback by meeting on Thursday, July 23
9. Brainstorm ways AI might affect economic activity
Think about the many dimensions of economic activity, and use AI to brainstorm how AI might change it.
Further watching/reading
- Clay Shirky, “Students are Skipping the Hardest Part of Growing Up”
- Hank Green, Unfortunately You Need to Know What The Jevons Paradox Is, 33 minutes (July 6, 2026) - he starts with a long discussion of this paradox, but goes into much more about the future and our present in his distinctive style
- 80,000 Hours, How not to lose your job to AI, (June, 2025) - discussion of which skills might get more valuable as AI expands, rather than less valuable, and how to think about that when shaping your own job search, and job preparation
- Analysis of past automation transitions:
- James Pethokoukis, What the story of ATMs tells us about automation and jobs, (June 6, 2016)
- Ernie Tedeschi, The decline of travel agents, (April 21, 2026)
- How AI has or hasn’t already shaped some jobs:
- NYTimes, Coding After Coders: The End of Computer Programming As We Know It (March 12, 2026)
- Deena Mousa, The Algorithm Will See You Now (why radiologists haven’t been replaced by AI) (Sept. 25, 2025)
- At Amazon, Some Coders Say Their Jobs Have Begun to Resemble Warehouse Work, New York Times (May 25, 2025)
- Useful predictions of future AI progress on jobs:
- Ezra Klein, Why the AI Job Apocalypse (Probably) Won’t Happen (May 3, 2026)
- Rational Animations, When Will AI Automate All Mental Work, And How Fast?, 12 minutes (May 31, 2025) - explains Tom Davidson’s economic model that gives a best guess of taking 3 years, around 2040, though it could be as early as 2030 or as late as 2100
- Financial Times, AI is Transforming the World of Work, Are We Ready For It?, 17 minutes (Dec. 1, 2024)
- New York Times, AI Might Take Your Job. Here are 22 New Ones it Could Give You, (June 17, 2025)
- New York Times, Which Workers Will AI Hurt Most: The Young or the Experienced?, (July 7, 2025)
- The past and future of exponential growth:
- Our World in Data’s post on what is economic growth, (May 13, 2021) and why we often think that it is about money and forget why it matters
- Tom Murphy’s blog post on Galactic-Scale Energy, (July 12, 2011) and how even a few centuries of the kind of growth we have so far will run up against it
- Holden Karnofsky, The Most Important Century, a series of blog posts (late 2021) arguing that everything is likely to change in unknowable ways in a few decades
- Everything Might Change This Century, 32 minutes (July 24, 2022) a video explaining Karnofsky’s blog posts
- General predictions on AI power
- Stuart Russell, How will AI Change the World?, 6 minutes (Dec. 6, 2022)
- Ray Kurzweil, The Last Six Decades of AI and What Comes Next, 13 minute (June 27, 2024) TED talk from a famous futurist who is always a bit out there
- Geoff Hinton, Will AI Outsmart Human Intelligence?, 47 minutes (July 22, 2025)