Immigration Before Automation

There seems to be an unstoppable march toward the automation of work, including the checkout at the supermarket, the seemingly limitless possibilities of ChatGPT, and so much else. What is driving this push toward automation? For one, labor scarcity in developed countries.

But Lant Pritchett, a development economist, argues in a new piece for Foreign Affairs that instead of choosing machines over people and funneling resources into job-killing technologies, countries should work to let people move to where they are needed. Pritchett is the research director of Labor Mobility Partnerships, the RISE research director at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford, and a former World Bank economist.

We discuss why automation is a policy choice rather than an inevitable force and how it is contributing to poverty levels across the globe.

You can find transcripts and more episodes of The Foreign Affairs Interview at https://www.foreignaffairs.com/podcasts/foreign-affairs-interview.