More News from IWER

Institute Professor Daron Acemoglu said: "The promise of technology was to create opportunities for all, but what we have is a single system that concentrates power and wealth."

Professor Catherine Wolfram and co-authors wrote: "The European Union's pending implementation of the world's first large-scale climate and trade policy will benefit the U.S. and expand production in important American industries while potentially boosting U.S. exports to the European Union."

"Harnessing fusion will deliver the energy resilience, security, and abundance needed for all modern industrial and service sectors," wrote associate dean for innovation Fiona E. Murray and co-authors. "But these benefits will be controlled by the nation that leads in both developing the complex supply chains required and building fusion power plants at scales large enough to drive down economic costs."

"Companies that really score highly on agility — NVIDIA, SpaceX, Tesla — tend to strike a deal with their employees," said professor of the practice Donald Sull. Employees are offered generous pay, great career opportunities and other perks. "But the trade-off is the work-life balance tends to be really bad," he added.

Professor Danielle Li said there were scenarios in which A.I. could undermine higher-skilled workers more than entry-level workers. For instance, you may no longer have to be an engineer to code, or a lawyer to write a legal brief. "That state of the world is not good for experienced workers," she said. "You're being paid for the rarity of your skill, and what happens is that A.I. allows the skill to live outside of people."

Professor Deborah Ancona said: "Sense-making is most often needed when our understanding of the world becomes unintelligible in some way. This occurs when the environment is changing rapidly, presenting us with surprises for which we are unprepared or confronting us with adaptive, rather than technical problems to solve."

A new trend shaking procurement in tech is the 'reverse acqui-hire' method. In this process, companies like Amazon strategically hire key personnel from start-ups to secure talent and intellectual assets without acquiring the entire entity. Professor Michael Cusumano explained: "To acquire only some employees or the majority, but not all, license technology, leave the company functioning but not really competing, that's a new twist."

China's main concerns about its holdings has long been over the dollar's value and whether the United States will pay its obligations, said professor Yasheng Huang. "The dollar has already depreciated, dragging down the Chinese holdings," he said.

Professor Emeritus Henry D. Jacoby wrote: "Federal resources for managing climate-augmented weather disasters are being wiped out, and crucial information about future risks is being destroyed or degraded. Meanwhile, state leaders stand by while denying the seriousness of climate change as a driver of these events — and the threat this poses to the state economy."

The natural worry for anyone hoping to have a job in five years' time is what AI might do to that job. MIT professor David Autor and research scientist Neil Thompson's research suggests a clarifying question: Does AI look like it is going to do the most highly skilled part of your job or the low-skill rump that you've not been able to get rid of? The answer to that question may help to predict whether your job is about to get more fun or more annoying — and whether your salary is likely to rise, or fall.