Man vs machine (cont'd)

We've been following the ongoing debate about what role technology is having on the jobs slump, and NPR presents a nice summary of the various positions. This is not so much about machines taking over mundane or dangerous jobs. It's more about how higher-skilled positions are getting squeezed.

"We see already that the work of legal discovery -- in other words, sitting around and reading huge volumes of documents at the early stage of a lawsuit ... is being very quickly and very heavily automated," says Andrew McAfee, an MIT researcher who helped organize the conference and is co-author of Race Against the Machine. "And by one estimate, it lets one lawyer do the work of 500." The world will still need brilliant human courtroom litigators, but not as many junior lawyers and paralegals. McAfee also says we won't need as many tax preparers. More complex manufacturing is being done by machines, which means even fewer auto workers.

WSJ columnist David Wessel raises some similar issues in his column:

Technology is putting some Americans out of work faster than it is creating new jobs. Wages of those riding the technology wave are rising steadily above wages of those who aren't. People can't change as fast as technology and the demands of employers change. Our schools aren't changing fast enough either.