Resolved: Technology Will Take All Our Jobs. A Future Tense Debate.
Policy wonks and journalists like to fret about otherwise desirable technological progress subtracting millions entry-level jobs from the economy. For the most part, though, they haven’t worried over their own positions, preferring to speculate about those in manufacturing or the service sector. Surely no amount of computing power can write policy papers or newspaper columns, negotiate with Iran, oversee constituent services in a congressional office or, um, convene a debate at a think tank.
Or can it? Will the advent of truly nuanced, intuitive artificial intelligence render the majority of workers in all segments of the economy redundant? What would that mean for former think tank debate-conveners? Will we find ourselves in a glorious age of leisure for all, or will these developments merely intensify old inequalities? Or are all such questions just another tiresome bout of excessive hype (and Luddite angst) around technology that will invariably prove overblown?
We’ll debate these questions and more at 6:30 p.m. on June 4, 2015. Presented by Future Tense, the event will be held at ASU in D.C., 1834 Connecticut Avenue NW. It features a distinguished panel of participants arguing for and against the motion. You can find more information about the panelists below. To RSVP, click here.
The event will be streamed live on the New America website.
For the Motion:
Christine Rosen, Senior Editor, the New Atlantis
Gerry Canavan, Assistant Professor, English, Marquette University
Against the Motion:
James Kotecki, Manager of Media & Public Relations, Automated Insights
Ronald Bailey, Science Correspondent, Reason
Future Tense is a partnership of Slate, New America, and Arizona State University.