Reporting for The Atlantic this week, John Hudson detailed a “polarizing conversation” taking place at the Aspen Ideas Festival in Colorado. The discussion’s participants, George Mason University professor Tyler Cowen and MIT's Andrew McAfee, have very different opinions on the impact of technology.

Hudson reiterated Cowen’s comparison to the latter half of the 20th century with the first when he declared, "We have simply not had that many life-altering innovations since 1973."

McAfee was inclined to think differently from Cowen due to the innovation of the modern day smart phone. Hudson recounted that McAfee’s new book, Race Against the Machine, states:

Computers now exhibit human-like capabilities not just in games such as chess, but also in complex communication such as linguistic translation and speech…Truck and taxi drivers should be worried - but then so should medical professionals, lawyers and accountants; all of their jobs are at risk too.”

The Alliance for American Manufacturing (AAM) blog ManufactureThis recently discussed the effect that new technology has had on the struggling manufacturing industry. Whereas the technology keeps improving, the current skills of the prospective employees aren't necessarily keeping up.

Conversely, we’ve also discussed the trend of colleges making an effort to educate students on the new technologies of manufacturing to provide for a more prepared future workforce.

To read more on the conversation between Cowen and McAfee, click here.

AAM Intern Leigh Raup wrote this piece.