Berkeley PhD reading group opens with Acemoglu's 'Race between Man and Machine' to frame AI's hit on cognitive labor
TaniaBabina · x · 2026-09-19
UC Berkeley has launched a PhD reading group on growth, technology and innovation, with Martin Beraja sharing the syllabus. The first session on production automation pairs Acemoglu & Pascual Restrepo's 'The Race between Man and Machine' with new work on AI and the labor market.
A key theme: a model originally written with robots in mind has become the workhorse for thinking about AI — the same substitution force now hitting cognitive tasks and highly paid workers. But AI is more than a fancy robot: upcoming sessions cover knowledge, learning inside organizations, and data ownership.
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