💭 What complexity science tells us about job automation risk

This can help us chart a path for the future of jobs

Our society encourages job specialisation — unsurprisingly so, given how it improves productivity. The division of labor was first espoused by Adam Smith; in The Wealth of Nations, he argues that growth depends on the increased specialisation of individual workers which profoundly increases the level of output at an aggregate level.

However, on an individual level, job anxiety is at its peak. Automation, off-shoring, climate change policies, are just some of the reasons why workers are worried about losing their jobs and income. To understand these dynamics deeper, we invited Dr. Penny Mealy to discuss her research in our penultimate State of the Exponential in 2019.

Penny is a Research Associate at the Institute of New Economic Thinking at the University of Oxford Martin School, as well as a Research Associate at the Bennett Institute for Public Policy, where she works with another friend of EV’s, Diane Coyle. Seeking to better understand the economy as a complex system, Penny’s resea…