RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK – Vivek Wadhwa is taking his globe-trotting research into technology’s impact on our present and future with a new appointment at Harvard Law School.

Vivek Wadhwa

Wadhwa has been named a Distinguished Fellow with the Labor and Worklife program at Harvard Law School “to help with what I consider to be the most important research project of our times: to understand the impact of technology on jobs and develop policies to mitigate the dangers.”

Reached by WRAL TechWire, Wadhwa says the project is “something that [economist] Richard Freeman and I have long been discussing. There is anecdotal evidence automation is affecting jobs but not enough hard research.”

Wadhwa has warned about a “jobless future” with robots, artificial intelligence and automation becoming more prevalent.

“We plan to get the data and establish the facts,” Wadhwa said. “Then we will bring together a who’s who to develop public policy.”

Wadhwa is a former RTP tech entrepreneur who became an academic as well as a widely published commentator [he’s a TechWire contributor] and author about technology and business issues. He will “spend as much time as I can” in the Boston area to participate in the project. He currently lives in the San Francisco Bay area while also continuing to teach a 12-credit course at Carnegie Mellon’s School of Engineering.

The Harvard position, which he calls a great honor, reflects Wadhwa’s passionate commitment to making technology an overall benefit to humankind, not a threat.

Star Trek or Mad Max?

“As I explained in [his book] Driver in the Driverless Car, it is imperative that we understand the impacts of technology and develop sensible policies. My hope is that the Harvard project will provide the research and directions to take us closer to where we want to be: Star Trek,” he wrote in an email to colleagues about the appointment.

“After all, we only have the world to save.”

Also part of the project are Freeman, former Obama Administration adviser Sharon Block and historian John Trumpbour.

“The 3-year project at Harvard’s Labor and Worklife program will bring together a who’s who to analyze new data on automation and jobs and to brainstorm on policy,” Wadhwa explained.

“This project is important because with the present course of technology, we are headed directly into the dystopia of Mad Max. Most people don’t understand how fast things are changing and how ugly the transition will be when cars and trucks begin to drive themselves, machines do the work of manufacturing and delivery, and AIs take over most skilled jobs.”

Wadhwa also has fought for greater diversity in employment from front rank to boardroom, immigration reform, and improvements in education.

But he’s most concerned now about that Mad Max world.

Joblessness and despair

“What makes things worse is that the people creating the technologies want us to believe that as tens of millions of jobs disappear over the next two decades, new ones will be created—and we will magically re-employ the people who have been displaced,” he wrote.

“Others tout a mystical solution: Universal Basic Income, a handout that governments provide to everyone which solves the social and economic problems of joblessness. The reality is that there will be few jobs created and joblessness will only lead to despair.”

To read up on Wadhwa’s thoughts, here are some links he recommends: