Future of work speaker Carl Benedikt Frey is an economic historian, economist, and author of German-Swedish descent. He is the director of the Oxford Martin School’s Future of Work.

Carl studied history, economics, and management and obtained a Ph.D. at the Max Planck Institute for Innovation and Competition. With backing from Citigroup, he then went on to join the Oxford Martin School, where he established the Future of Work program. Moreover, he taught economic history at Lund University from 2012 to 2014.

Speaker Carl Benedikt Frey was appointed as an Economics Associate at Nuffield College in 2012. He also joined the Institute for New Economic Thinking as Senior Fellow. Carl continues to serve the Department of Economic History at Lund University as a Senior Fellow. Carl is a Fellow of the RSA.

In 2019, Carl joined the Bretton Woods Committee and the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the New Economic Agenda. In 2020, he joined the GPAI, a project to encourage the responsible development and utilization of artificial intelligence.

Speaker Carl Benedikt Frey co-wrote a book talking about how automation will threaten 47% of all jobs. The methodology discussed in the study has received over 6,000 citations. This approach was utilized by the Council of Economic Advisors of President Barack Obama. John Oliver’s Last Week Tonight Show with John Oliver featured a discussion about the paper in 2019.

Frey has worked as a consultant and advisor for a variety of worldwide organizations, including governments, think tanks, and businesses. Among those the G20, the United Nations, the European Commission, and a number of Fortune 500 businesses. Furthermore, Carl contributes to a number of media outlets, such as Foreign Affairs, the Financial Times, and Scientific American, to name a few. Additionally, he has published articles in the Wall Street Journal on the history of technology, the economics of AI, and the future of work.

More than 100 media outlets have covered his academic work. His work has also appeared in Bloomberg, The Economist, The New York Times, The Guardian, Time Magazine, and Le Monde. Aside from that, he has made numerous appearances on worldwide broadcast media like BBC, CNN, Sky News, and Al Jazeera.

The 2019’s Best Books of the Year list by the Financial Times included Carl’s most recent book, The Technology Trap.