Economists See More Jobs for Machines, Not People - NYTime... HOME PAGE TODAY'S PAPER VIDEO MOST POPULAR http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/technology/economists-se... Subscribe: Home Delivery / Digital Log In Register Now Help TIMES TOPICS Search All NYTimes.com Business Day Technology WORLD U.S. N.Y. / REGION BUSINESS TECHNOLOGY SCIENCE HEALTH SPORTS OPINION ARTS STYLE TRAVEL JOBS REAL ESTATE AUTOS More Jobs Predicted for Machines, Not People Log in to see what your Log In With Facebook friends are sharing on nytimes.com. Privacy Policy | What’s This? By STEVE LOHR Published: October 23, 2011 A faltering economy explains much of the job shortage in America, but advancing technology has sharply magnified the effect, more so than is generally understood, according to two researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Enlarge This Image The automation of more and more work once done by humans is the central theme of “Race Against the Machine,” an e-book to be published on Monday. What’s Popular Now RECOMMEND TWITTER Bonuses Worthy of Protest for Gannett and Tribune Executives LINKEDIN SIGN IN TO E-MAIL The Hole in Europe’s Bucket PRINT REPRINTS SHARE Ads by Google what's this? ITT Tech - Official Site Mark Ostow for The New York Times Erik Brynjolfsson, left, and Andrew McAfee, authors of “Race Against the Machine,” argue in their e-book that technological advancements are outpacing the human worker. Enlarge This Image “Many workers, in short, are losing the race against the machine,” the authors write. Associate, Bachelor Degree Programs Browse Programs Now & Learn More. Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist and director of the M.I.T. Center for Digital Business, and Andrew P. McAfee, associate director and principal research scientist at the center, are two of the nation’s leading experts on technology and productivity. The tone of alarm in their book is a departure for the pair, whose previous research has focused mainly on the benefits of advancing technology. www.ECPI.edu/InfoTech www.ITT-Tech.edu Earn Your IT Degree Indeed, they were originally going to write a book titled, “The Digital Frontier,” about the “cornucopia of innovation that is going on,” Mr. McAfee said. Yet as the employment picture failed to brighten in the last two years, the two changed course to examine technology’s role in the jobless recovery. Take Courses In Your Own Time For Online Degree In Information Tech! Masters in Education & IT MS in Education & IT Program at WOU Get Your Degree Online or On Campus www.WOU.edu/Masters-Education-IT IT Staffing Agency Modis and Ajilon Have Combined To Connect You with Top IT Talent www.modis.com Company Driver Jobs Company Drivers Wanted. Find The Best Paying Jobs w/ More Home Time. www.TopPayForDrivers.com 2.5% Mortgage refinance No Hidden Fees Ever - 2.91% APR BBB Member No Credit Check No SSN Refinance.MortgageLoan.com Advertise on NYTimes.com TimesLimited E-Mail The authors are not the only ones recently to point to the job fallout from technology. In the current issue of the McKinsey Quarterly, W. Brian Arthur, an Sign up to receive exclusive products and Subscribe to Technology RSS Feeds external professor at the Santa Fe Institute, warns that technology is quickly taking over service jobs, MORE IN TECHNOLOGY (3 OF 26 ARTICLES) DealBook: Japanese Bankers at following the waves of automation of farm and Heart of Olympus Fee Inquiry factory work. “This last repository of jobs is Read More » 1 of 4 10/24/11 5:53 AM Economists See More Jobs for Machines, Not People - NYTime... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/technology/economists-se... shrinking — fewer of us in the future may have white-collar business process jobs — and we have a problem,” Mr. Arthur writes. MOST E-MAILED The M.I.T. authors’ claim that automation is accelerating is not shared by some economists. Prominent among them are Robert J. Gordon of Northwestern and Tyler Cowen of George Mason University, who contend that productivity improvement owing to technological innovation rose from 1995 to 2004, but has trailed off since. Mr. Cowen emphasized that point in an e-book, “The Great Stagnation,” published this year. 1. GRADING THE DIGITAL SCHOOL 2. LIVES RESTORED A Silicon Valley School That Doesn’t Compute A High-Profile Executive Job as Defense Against Mental Ills 3. Don’t Blink! The Hazards of Confidence Technology has always displaced some work and jobs. Over the years, many experts have warned — mistakenly — that machines were gaining the upper hand. In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes warned of a “new disease” that he termed “technological unemployment,” the inability of the economy to create new jobs faster than jobs were lost to automation. 4. OP-ED COLUMNIST One Country, Two Revolutions 5. A Hearing Aid That Cuts Out All the Clatter 6. Unreasonable, Maybe, but It’s on a Social Mission But Mr. Brynjolfsson and Mr. McAfee argue that the pace of automation has picked up in recent years because of a combination of technologies including robotics, numerically controlled machines, computerized inventory control, voice recognition and online commerce. Faster, cheaper computers and increasingly clever software, the authors say, are giving machines capabilities that were once thought to be distinctively human, like understanding speech, translating from one language to another and recognizing patterns. So automation is rapidly moving beyond factories to jobs in call centers, marketing and sales — parts of the services sector, which provides most jobs in the economy. MOST VIEWED 7. OPINION 8. OPINION The Paradox of the New Elite Will Dropouts Save America? 9. A Man, a Bike and 4,100 Miles 10. The Fierce Imagination of Haruki Murakami Go to Complete List » Show My Recommendations During the last recession, the authors write, one in 12 people in sales lost their jobs, for example. And the downturn prompted many businesses to look harder at substituting technology for people, if possible. Since the end of the recession in June 2009, they note, corporate spending on equipment and software has increased by 26 percent, while payrolls have been flat. Corporations are doing fine. The companies in the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index are expected to report record profits this year, a total $927 billion, estimates FactSet Research. And the authors point out that corporate profit as a share of the economy is at a 50-year high. Productivity growth in the last decade, at more than 2.5 percent, they observe, is higher than the 1970s, 1980s and even edges out the 1990s. Still the economy, they write, did not add to its total job count, the first time that has happened over a decade since the Depression. Vegetarian recipes for entertaining ALSO IN STYLE » Here come the (stylish) grooms There's the wrong way and Jacques Pépin's way ADVERTISEMENTS The skills of machines, the authors write, will only improve. In 2004, two leading economists, Frank Levy and Richard J. Murnane, published “The New Division of Labor,” which analyzed the capabilities of computers and human workers. Truck driving was cited as an example of the kind of work computers could not handle, recognizing and reacting to moving objects in real time. Exclusive offers delivered to your inbox But last fall, Google announced that its robot-driven cars had logged thousands of miles on American roads with only an occasional assist from human back-seat MORE IN TECHNOLOGY (3 OF 26 ARTICLES) drivers. The Google cars, Mr. Brynjolfsson said, are but one sign of the times. DealBook: Japanese Bankers at Heart of Olympus Fee Inquiry Read More » 2 of 4 10/24/11 5:53 AM Economists See More Jobs for Machines, Not People - NYTime... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/technology/economists-se... As others have, he pointed to I.B.M.’s “Jeopardy”-playing computer, Watson, which in February beat a pair of human “Jeopardy” champions; and Apple’s new personal assistant software, Siri, which responds to voice commands. “This technology can do things now that only a few years ago were thought to be beyond the reach of computers,” Mr. Brynjolfsson said. RBCC - Emerging Market Upswing in Stock View Ticker and Invest Today www.RainbowBiosciences.com Yet computers, the authors say, tend to be narrow and literal-minded, good at assigned tasks but at a loss when a solution requires intuition and creativity — human traits. A partnership, they assert, is the path to job creation in the future. “In medicine, law, finance, retailing, manufacturing and even scientific discovery,” they write, “the key to winning the race is not to compete against machines but to compete with machines.” A version of this article appeared in print on October 24, 2011, on page B3 of the New York edition with the headline: More Jobs Predicted for Machines, Not People. Connect with The New York Times on Facebook. SIGN IN TO E-MAIL PRINT REPRINTS SPONSORED HEADLINES What's This? PC World Latest Technology News Intel’s Ivy Bridge: What You Need to Know Discovery 5 Failed McDonald's Menu Items Leadpile's Blog Meet One of the Fastest Growing Companies in America Business Barbados How Would A Wi-Fi Nation Affect Barbados? INSIDE NYTIMES.COM ARTS » OPINION » N.Y. / REGION » BOOKS » OPINION » SPORTS » Letters: Global Warming A Glut of Bands, Amid a Fog of Blaring Sound Home World U.S. Op-Ed: Seven Billion N.Y. / Region © 2011 The New York Times Company 3 of 4 Wedding as Spectacle, Bearing a Message Business Privacy Technology Your Ad Choices Science The Stranger’s Child Health Site Map Terms of Service Advertise Sports Readers respond to a Sunday Review article on global warming fading from Orchestra Filled With the American Fans agenda. Opinion MORE IN TECHNOLOGY (3 OF 26 ARTICLES) DealBook: Japanese Bankers at of Olympus Fee Inquiry Terms of Sale Heart Read More » 10/24/11 5:53 AM Economists See More Jobs for Machines, Not People - NYTime... http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/24/technology/economists-se... MORE IN TECHNOLOGY (3 OF 26 ARTICLES) DealBook: Japanese Bankers at Heart of Olympus Fee Inquiry Read More » 4 of 4 10/24/11 5:53 AM