I have a new R Street Institute policy study out this week doing a deep dive into the question: “Can We Predict the Jobs and Skills Needed for the AI Era?” There’s lots of hand-wringing going on today about AI and the future of employment, but that’s really nothing new. In fact, in light of past automation panics, we might want to step back and ask: Why isn’t everyone already unemployed due to technological innovation?
To get my answers, please read the paper! In the meantime, here’s the executive summary:
To better plan for the economy of the future, many academics and policymakers regularly attempt to forecast the jobs and worker skills that will be needed going forward. Driving these efforts are fears about how technological automation might disrupt workers, skills, professions, firms and entire industrial sectors. The continued growth of artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and other computational technologies exacerbate these anxieties.
Yet the limits of both our collective knowledge and our individual imaginations constrain well-intentioned efforts to plan for the workforce of the future. Past attempts to assist workers or industries have often failed for various reasons. However, dystopian predictions about mass technological unemployment persist, as do retraining or reskilling programs that typically fail to produce much of value for workers or society. As public efforts to assist or train workers move from general to more specific, the potential for policy missteps grows greater. While transitional-support mechanisms can help alleviate some of the pain associated with fast-moving technological disruption, the most important thing policymakers can do is clear away barriers to economic dynamism and new opportunities for workers.
I do discuss some things that government can do to address automation fears at the end of the paper, but it’s important that policymakers first understand all the mistakes we’ve made with past retraining and reskilling efforts. The easiest thing to do to help in the short-term is clear away barriers to labor mobility and economic dynamism, I argue. Again, read the study for details.
For more info on other AI policy developments, check out my running list of research on AI, ML robotics policy.
Just three days ago I penned another installment in my ongoing series about the growing phenomenon of “global innovation arbitrage” — or the idea that “innovators can, and increasingly will, move to those countries and continents that provide a legal and regulatory environment more hospitable to entrepreneurial activity.” And now it’s already time for another entry in the series!
Aerial pizza delivery may sound futuristic but Domino’s has been given the green light to test New Zealand pizza delivery via drones. The fast food chain has partnered with drone business Flirtey to launch the first commercial drone delivery service in the world, starting later this year.
Importantly, according to the story, “If it is successful the company plans to extend the delivery method to six other markets – Australia, Belgium, France, The Netherlands, Japan and Germany.” That’s right, America is not on the list. In other words, a popular American pizza delivery chain is looking overseas to find the freedom to experiment with new delivery methods. And the reason they are doing so is because of the seemingly endless bureaucratic foot-dragging by federal regulators at the FAA. Continue reading →
In a terrific little essay on “Local Economic Revival and The Unpredictability of Technological Innovation,” Michael Mandel, the chief economic strategist at the Progressive Policy Institute, makes several important points regarding the fundamental folly for future forecasting efforts as it pertains to new innovations. He notes, for example:
There are plenty of candidates for the “next big thing,” ranging from the Internet of Things to additive manufacturing to artificial organ factories to autonomous cars to space commerce to Elon Musk’s hyperloop. Each of these has the potential to revolutionize an industry, and to create many thousands or even millions of jobs in the process–not just for the highly-educated, but a whole range of workers.
Yet the problem–and the beauty–is that technological innovation is fundamentally unpredictable, even at close range. Consider this: The two most important innovations of the past decade, economically, have been the smartphone and fracking. The smartphone transformed the way that we communicate and hydraulic fracturing has driven down the price of energy, not to mention shifting the geopolitical balance of power.
But few saw the smartphone and fracking revolutions coming, he notes. The pundits and the press were too focused on technologies of the past. Continue reading →
Along with colleagues at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, I am releasing two major new reports today dealing with the regulation of the sharing economy. The first report is a 20-page filing to the Federal Trade Commissionthat we are submitting to the agency for its upcoming June 9th workshop on “The “Sharing” Economy: Issues Facing Platforms, Participants, and Regulators.” We have been invited to participate in that event and I will be speaking on the fourth panel of the workshop. The filing I am submitting today for that workshop was co-authored with my Mercatus colleagues Christopher Koopman and Matt Mitchell.
The sharing economy is growing faster than ever and becoming a hot policy topic these days. I’ve been fielding a lot of media calls lately about the nature of the sharing economy and how it should be regulated. (See latest clip below from the Stossel show on Fox Business Network.) Thus, I sketched out some general thoughts about the issue and thought I would share them here, along with some helpful additional reading I have come across while researching the issue. I’d welcome comments on this outline as well as suggestions for additional reading. (Note: I’ve also embedded some useful images from Jeremiah Owyang of Crowd Companies.)
1)
Just because policymakers claim that regulation is meant to protect consumers does not mean it actually does so.
Cronyism/ Rent-seeking: Regulation is often “captured” by powerful and politically well-connected incumbents and used to their own benefit. (+ Lobbying activity creates deadweight losses for society.)
Innovation-killing: Regulations become a formidable barrier to new innovation, entry, and entrepreneurism.
Unintended consequences: Instead of resulting in lower prices & better service, the opposite often happens: Higher prices & lower quality service. (Example: Painting all cabs same color destroying branding & ability to differentiate).
Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com, discusses how Overstock.com became one of the first online retail stores to accept Bitcoin. Byrne provides insight into how Bitcoin lowers transaction costs, making it beneficial to both retailers and consumers, and how governments are attempting to limit access to Bitcoin. Byrne also discusses his project DeepCapture.com, which raises awareness for market manipulation and naked short selling, as well as his philanthropic work and support for education reform.
Jack Schinasi discusses his recent working paper, Practicing Privacy Online: Examining Data Protection Regulations Through Google’s Global Expansion published in the Columbia Journal of Transnational Law. Schinasi takes an in-depth look at how online privacy laws differ across the world’s biggest Internet markets — specifically the United States, the European Union and China. Schinasi discusses how we exchange data for services and whether users are aware they’re making this exchange. And, if not, should intermediaries like Google be mandated to make its data tracking more apparent? Or should we better educate Internet users about data sharing and privacy? Schinasi also covers whether privacy laws currently in place in the US and EU are effective, what types of privacy concerns necessitate regulation in these markets, and whether we’ll see China take online privacy more seriously in the future.
Yesterday it was my privilege to speak at a Free State Foundation (FSF) event on “Ideas for Communications Law and Policy Reform in 2013.” It was moderated by my friend and former colleague Randy May, who is president of FSF, and the event featured opening remarks from the always-excellent FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell.
During the panel discussing that followed, I offered my thoughts about the problem America continues to face in cleaning up communications and media law and proposed a few ideas to get reform done right once and for all. I don’t have time to formally write-up my remarks, but I thought I would just post the speech notes that I used yesterday and include links to the relevant supporting materials. (I’ve been using a canned version of this same speech at countless events over the past 15 years. Hopefully lawmakers will take up some of these reforms some time soon so I’m not using this same set of remarks in 2027!)
In my last post, I discussed an outstanding new paper from Ronald Cass on “Antitrust for High-Tech and Low: Regulation, Innovation, and Risk.” As I noted, it’s one of the best things I’ve ever read about the relationship between antitrust regulation and the modern information economy. That got me thinking about what other papers on this topic that I might recommend to others. So, for what it’s worth, here are the 12 papers that have most influenced my own thinking on the issue. (If you have other suggestions for what belongs on the list, let me know. No reason to keep it limited to just 12.)
Stan J. Liebowitz & Stephen E. Margolis,”Path Dependence, Lock-in, and History,” 11(1) Journal of Law, Economics and Organization, (April 1995): 205-26.
Writing over at the conservative Big Government blog (part of the Breitbart.com network of blogs), someone who goes by the pseudonym “Capitol Connection” has posted an editorial about the debate over retransmission consent reform that is full of misinformation and misguided policy prescriptions, at least if you believe is truly limited government. The piece is entitled, “Big Cable Would Prefer if You Paid Their Bills,” and the problems are almost immediately evident from that headline alone. First, what is a supposedly small government-oriented blog doing using a silly label like “Big Cable” to describe a vigorously competitive sector of our capitalist economy? Using terms like “Big Cable” is a silly lefty tactic. Second, no one in the cable industry is proposing anyone “pay their bills” except for the customers who enjoy their services. Isn’t a fee for service part of capitalism?
Anyway, that’s just the problem with the title of the essay. Sadly, the rest of the piece is filled with even more erroneous information and arguments about the retransmission consent regulatory process as well as the bill that aims to reform that process, “The Next Generation Television Marketplace Act” (H.R. 3675 and S. 2008). That bill, which is sponsored by Senator Jim DeMint (R-SC) and Rep. Steve Scalise (R-LA), represents a comprehensive attempt to deregulate America’s heavily regulated video marketplace. In a recent Forbes oped, I argued that the DeMint-Scalise effort would take us “Toward a True Free Market in Television Programming” by eliminating a litany of archaic media regulations that should have never been on the books to begin with. The measure would:
eliminate: “retransmission consent” regulations (rules governing contractual negotiations for content);
end “must carry” mandates (the requirement that video distributors carry broadcast signals even if they don’t want to);
repeal “network non-duplication” and “syndicated exclusivity” regulations (rules that prohibit distributors from striking deals with broadcasters outside their local communities);
end various media ownership regulations; and
end the compulsory licensing requirements of the Copyright Act of 1976, which essentially forced a “duty to deal” upon content owners to the benefit of video distributors.
This represents genuine and much-needed deregulation of a market that has been encumbered with far too much top-down control and micro-management by the FCC over the past several decades. To be clear,
none of these rules apply to any other segment of our modern information economy. Every day of the week, deals are cut between content creators and distributors in many other segments of the media industry without these rules encumbering the process. The DeMint-Scalise bill is an attempt to get big government out of the way and let these deals be cut in a truly free market without regulators putting their thumb on the scale in one direction or the other. Continue reading →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology. Learn more about TLF →
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.