For all the talk about how artificial intelligence is going to transform our daily lives, Ford CEO Jim Farley said that technological advances are leaving some people behind.
It’s the factory employees, construction workers, and HVAC installers who are “the backbone of our society,” he said at the Aspen Ideas Festival on Friday, in an interview with author Walter Isaacson. And, yet productivity levels for what he calls these “essential economy” workers have fallen, even as new technologies have boosted efficiency and made white collar jobs 28% more productive, he said, citing research from The Aspen Institute. Farley also pointed out how there are millions of open roles for factory, construction, and auto technician jobs today that companies are struggling to fill, he said.
