In the News: Aaron Benanav

In the glory days of the American labor movement, when unions were strong and wages rose alongside productivity, “organized workers could cash that out as more free time,” says Aaron Benanav, assistant professor of sociology. “But for decades, workers haven’t even been getting that choice because, for the most part, productivity growth has ended up as higher profits and more inequality.”

“I think about academics having to write grants all the time,” says Aaron Benanav, assistant professor of sociology, as an example. Those can be formulaic and would take far less time with the help of a machine. In programming, it’s helping engineers “write up basic outlines of code or sometimes like whole sections of code,” he says. 

Amid the rapid rise of artificial intelligence and autonomous systems, Maxwell scholars are gathering critical data, designing policy and informing future leaders.

Surveys indicate that Swedish citizens display less anxiety about robots taking their jobs, in part because when companies introduce new technologies, they often pay to upgrade their workers’ skills. “If you upskill workers, you pay them more,” says Aaron Benanav, assistant professor of sociology. “That's a more durable and sustainable process.”

"Even if the vast majority of jobs are unlikely to disappear, and if many new jobs are likely to be created, the nature of work will change due to the implementation of technologies like ChatGPT. We need to shift our thinking about how that change occurs," writes Aaron Benanav, assistant professor of sociology.

“When interest rates were very low, companies basically had endless money—and investors were telling them to focus on growth, not profitability,” says Aaron Benanav, assistant professor of sociology. “But because interest rates are rising, there’s a shift from big investors to say, ‘No, now you really have to focus on profitability.’ And the big way to do that is through cuts.”