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73 · A DA ACADEMIC

"The Task Decomposition"

David Autor

CHAPTER
ch09 · No Way Know-How
TIER
Academic
STATUS
Living · Active
ACTIVE
1966 – present
AFFILIATION
MIT Department of Economics · NBER
JURISDICTION
Labor Economics / Automation / Task Theory
COLD OPEN
"Automation does not eliminate jobs. It eliminates tasks within jobs. The question is never whether the machine can do what you do. The question is what new coordination tasks emerge once the old ones are gone — and whether humans will occupy them."
OVERVIEW

Labor economist who reframed the automation debate by decomposing jobs into bundles of tasks rather than fixed roles. His task decomposition framework shows that automation systematically eliminates routine tasks while creating demand for non-routine coordination — the human work that machines cannot yet do because it requires contextual judgment.

WHY THIS VOICE MATTERS TO KNOWWARE
Autor names the economic argument for coordination intelligence: as automation eliminates two-body tasks (input → output), the residual work is three-body coordination — tasks that require understanding context, managing exceptions, and working across systems. His research predicts that coordination intelligence will be the most valuable human capability in an automated economy.
OUTSTANDING NOTES
  • ◦IZA Prize in Labor Economics
  • ◦John Bates Clark Medal (2024)
  • ◦ASA Fellow
CLASSIFICATION
DA
ACADEMIC · TIER A
ch09
METHODS & FRAMEWORKS
5 entries
Task decomposition frameworkLabor market polarizationAutomation and employmentSkill-biased technical changeMiddle-skill job hollowing
KEY WORKS
  1. 01 The Work of the Future (2022)
  2. 02 Skills, Tasks and Technologies (2010)
  3. 03 Why Are There Still So Many Jobs? (2015)
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