MIT FOREFRONT

From Research to Action: Work of the Future

February 19, 2021

This virtual event brought together high-level leaders to consider and take action on the efforts of MIT’s Task Force on the Work of the Future, a two-year endeavor to explore how we can harness technological innovations for social benefit.

Read the impact memo based on the discussion and the MIT News recap of the event.

At MIT Forefront, industry, labor, and education leaders explore ways to prepare workers and improve jobs.

The February 2021 event, “From Research to Action: Work of the Future,” was the second in the MIT Forefront series, which seeks to find bold, new answers to urgent global problems. It reached over 15,000 people from all over the world and featured a discussion among industry, labor, and education leaders about how to create greater shared prosperity.

Launched in spring 2018, the MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future brought together multidisciplinary researchers throughout the Institute to examine how to harness technological innovations for social benefit. This research culminated in the report, The Work of the Future: Building Better Jobs in an Age of Intelligent Machines.

Speakers

Host

L. Rafael Reif

MIT President

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Moderator

David Autor

Co-Chair, MIT Task Force on the Work of the Future and Ford Professor of Economics

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Panelist

Natarajan Chandrasekaran

Executive Chairman, Tata Sons

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Panelist

Ai-jen Poo

Cofounder and Executive Director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance

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Panelist

Ginni M. Rometty

Former Executive Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of IBM

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Panelist

Juan Salgado

Chancellor, City Colleges of Chicago

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Panelist

Peter L. Slavin, MD

President, Massachusetts General Hospital

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“How we design tomorrow’s technologies, and the policies and practices we build around them, will profoundly shape their impact… In other words, whether the outcome is inclusive or exclusive, fair or laissez-faire, is up to us.”

-L. Rafael Reif

“I could see a digital divide growing between ‘have’ and ‘have not’… We had to do something to bring this technology safely into the world, and ‘safely’ means that it can help people make a good living.”

-Ginni Rometty

“There are millions upon millions of workers in this country who work incredibly hard and simply cannot make ends meet. And many of those jobs, it turns out, are essential to our health, our safety, and our well-being.”

-Ai-jen Poo