6 days Ago
Five MIT faculty members and two additional alumni were recently named to the 2024 cohort of AI2050 Fellows. The honor is announced annually by Schmidt Futures, Eric and Wendy Schmidt's philanthropic initiative that aims to accelerate scientific innovation. Conceived and co-chaired by Eric Schmidt and James Manyika, AI2050 is a philanthropic initiative aimed at helping to solve hard problems in AI.
Within their research, each fellow will contend with the central motivating question of AI2050: "It's 2050. AI has turned out to be hugely beneficial to society. What happened? What are the most important problems we solved and the opportunities and possibilities we realized to ensure this outcome?" This year's MIT-affiliated AI2050 Fellows include: David Autor, the Daniel (1972) and Gail Rubinfeld Professor in the MIT Department of Economics, and co-director of the MIT Shaping the Future of Work Initiative and the National Bureau of Economic Research's Labor Studies Program, has been named a 2024 AI2050 senior fellow.
His scholarship explores the labor-market impacts of technological change and globalization on job polarization, skill demands, earnings levels and inequality, and electoral outcomes. Autor's AI2050 project will leverage real-time data on AI adoption to clarify how new tools interact with human capabilities in shaping employment and earnings. The work will provide an accessible framework for entrepreneurs, technologists, and policymakers seeking to understand, tangibly, how AI can complement human expertise.
Autor has received numerous awards and honors, including a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship, an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship, and the Heinz 25th Special Recognition Award from the Heinz Family Foundation for his work "transforming our understanding of how globalization and technological change are impacting jobs and earning prospects for American workers." In 2023, Autor was one of two researchers.
.. Jane Halpern.
