Join the Tech Impact and Policy Center on January 27th from 12PM–1PM Pacific for AI, Automation, and Augmentation, a seminar with Rob Reich.

Stanford affiliates are invited to join us at 11:40 AM for lunch, prior to the seminar.  The Winter Seminar Series continues through March; see our Winter Seminar Series page for speakers and topics. Sign up for our newsletter for announcements. 

About the Seminar:

Will artificial intelligence replace human workers, or will it empower them? Tech leaders and economists have long warned that AI is fundamentally a "labor-replacing tool" destined to automate away millions of jobs. But this outcome is not inevitable—it reflects specific design choices, not technological fate.
This presentation challenges the prevailing automation narrative by recovering a neglected vision from the history of computing. Drawing on labor economics and the history of computing, this paper examines the distinction between automation (machines doing tasks for us) and augmentation (machines doing tasks with us). It argues that both the design choices of AI developers, the policy decisions of governments, and the adoption patterns of users will determine the effects of AI on labor and society.

About the Speaker:

Rob Reich is the McGregor-Girand Professor of Social Ethics of Science and Technology at Stanford University. His main appointment is in Political Science where he works at the intersection of political theory, social science, and computer science. He is senior fellow at the Institute for Human Centered Artificial Intelligence. His current interests are in AI governance. He was on public service leave in 2024-25 as Senior Advisor to the United States AI Safety Institute. His most recent books are System Error: Where Big Tech Went Wrong and How We Can Reboot (with Mehran Sahami and Jeremy M. Weinstein 2021) and Digital Technology and Democratic Theory (edited with Lucy Bernholz and Hélène Landemore). He has testified before Congress and written widely for the public, including for the New York Times, Washington Post, Wired, Time Magazine, The Atlantic, The Guardian, and the Stanford Social Innovation Review. He was a sixth grade teacher at Rusk Elementary School in Houston, Texas before attending graduate school. He is a board member of the magazine Boston Review and at the Spencer Foundation. He helped to create the global movement #GivingTuesday and serves as the founding chair of its board.