2024-11-18
48 分钟It’s true that robots (and other smart technologies) will kill many jobs. It may also be true that newer collaborative robots (“cobots”) will totally reinvigorate how work gets done. That, at least, is what the economists are telling us. Should we believe them?
Hey there, it's Stephen Dubner.
And this is a bonus episode of Freakonomics radio.
In 2021, we put out an episode about the future of robots in the workforce.
It featured a couple economists who had been studying how robots, or cobots for collaborative robots, were being used in Japanese nursing homes.
Those same economists recently put out a follow up paper, so we thought we'd replay the original episode with updated facts and figures and then hear about the new research findings.
We've also got some robot news from an American nursing home.
So here is the updated episode.
It's called how to Stop Worrying and Love the Robot Apocalypse.
We might as well start with an economist.
No, no, I'm not even a real economist.
I just play one at mit.
That's David Autor.
He is a real economist.
He's been on the show a few times before.
His path to economics professor was indirect.
I started as an undergraduate at Columbia.
I dropped out after three semesters.
I worked, I rode a motorcycle.
I went back and completed my undergraduate degree at Tufts a couple years later.
I studied psychology with a concentration in computer science.