[2] He is also known for his research and scholarship[3] into the intersection of technology and the economy, including artificial intelligence,[4] robotics automation, and the future of work.

[11] During the Obama administration, Manyika served as vice-chair of the United States Global Development Council at the White House.

[9] Trained as a roboticist, while at Oxford Manyika studied computer science, artificial intelligence (AI), robotics,[9] and topics such as Bayesian networks[25] and decentralized data fusion.

[21] During that time he was also a faculty exchange fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a visiting scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Labs in California.

[28] He was chairman and director of the McKinsey Global Institute for 13 years and published extensively on technology, competitiveness, productivity and the economy.

[29][30][31] In 2022, he became Google’s first Senior Vice President of Technology and Society, reporting to CEO Sundar Pichai, where he helps shape Google's views on issues such as AI, the future of work, the digital economy, computing infrastructure and sustainability, focusing on how all of these benefit and affect societies, their economies and the planet as a whole.

[32] In April 2023, his role was expanded to Senior Vice President and President for Research, Technology & Society and now includes overseeing Google Research, which works on fundamental advances in computer science across areas such as AI and ML, algorithms and theory, privacy and security, quantum computing, health, climate and sustainability and responsible AI, as well as Google Labs.

[21][12] During the Obama administration, from December[10] 2012[21] until 2017,[10] Manyika served as vice-chair of the United States Global Development Council at the White House.

[12] In 2017, he resigned from the Commerce Department's Digital Economy Board of Advisors after Donald Trump made controversial comments about deadly violence against counter-protestors in Charlottesville, Virginia.

[37] In August 2019,[38] California Governor Gavin Newsom appointed Manyika and Mary Kay Henry as co-chairs[29] of the state's Future of Work Commission.

[44] Manyika contributed one chapter to the 2018 book Architects of Intelligence: The truth about AI from the people building it,[45] by Martin Ford.

[60] He has been a member of the AI Index team at Stanford[61] and was an officer of the One Hundred Year Study on Artificial Intelligence, a project at Stanford University where experts discuss the future societal impacts of AI[62] and was on the advisory board of the University of California, Berkeley School of Information.

[63] Manyika has served on the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine's Committee on Responsible Computing Research and its Application.