The American workforce is at a crossroads. Digitization and automation have replaced millions of middle-class jobs, while wages have stagnated for many who remain employed. A lot of labor has become insecure, low-income freelance work.

Yet there is reason for optimism on behalf of workers, as scholars and business leaders outlined recently in an MIT conference. Automation and artificial intelligence do not just replace jobs; they also create them. And many labor, education, and safety-net policies could help workers greatly as well.

That was the outlook of many participants at the conference, “AI and the Work of the Future Congress,” marking the release of the final report of MIT’s Task Force on the Work of the Future. The report concludes that there is no technology-driven jobs wipeout on the horizon, but new policies are needed to match the steady march of innovation; technology has mostly helped white-collar workers but not the rest of the workforce in the United States.

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