ALBAWABA – With lessons to be learnt from history, about how humanity did not reap the benefits of many advances in production, agriculture and the economy overall, the question still stands today: will AI be an economic blessing or curse for people in the field?
In many instances throughout history, workers in the field were unable to reap the fruit of their labor and the advances that came with technology.
A strong example of that is the plough, which did not lift Europe’s peasants out of poverty. Simply because feudal rulers took most of the wealth generated by the new gains in output. And instead of injecting it back into their societies and communities, they used it to build cathedrals, forts and palaces.
Similar misfortunes may befall workers in fields that are gradually incorporating and integrating artificial intelligence (AI), according to a Reuters article published Monday.
"AI has got a lot of potential - but potential to go either way," argues Simon Johnson, professor of global economics and management at MIT Sloan School of Management.
"We are at a fork in the road," he told Reuters.
Proponents of AI predict a productivity leap that will generate wealth and improve living standards. In fact, Consultancy McKinsey in June estimated AI could add between $14 trillion and $22 trillion of value annually – that upper figure being roughly the current size of the US economy, according to Reuters.
Some tech-optimists went as far as to say that, along with robots, AI will finally free humanity from humdrum tasks and launch us into lives of more creativity and leisure.
Yet there are concerns about its impact on livelihoods, including its potential to destroy jobs in all kinds of sectors. Look at Hollywood and the strike in July by actors who fear being made redundant by their AI-generated doubles.
Will AI be an economic blessing or curse: Productivity gain?
Such concerns are not unfounded. There is an abundance of evidence from history showing how the economic impact of technological advances is generally uncertain, unequal and sometimes outright malign.
A book published this year by Johnson and fellow MIT economist Daron Acemoglu surveyed a thousand years of technology, from the invention of the plough through to automated self-checkout kiosks The survey addressed these advances’ success in creating jobs and spreading wealth.
While the spinning jenny was key to 18th century automation of the textiles industry, they found it led to longer working hours in harsher conditions.
Moreover, mechanical cotton gains facilitated the 19th century expansion of slavery in the American South.
On the other hand, the track record of the Internet is complex: it has created many new job roles even as much of the wealth generated has gone to a handful of billionaires. And the productivity gains it was once lauded for have slowed across many economies.
French bank Natixis conducted a research in June. In a note, Natixis explained the strange phenomenon of the internet, saying that even a technology as pervasive as the Internet has left many sectors untouched. Meanwhile, many of the jobs it created were low-skilled - think of the delivery chain for online purchases.
"Conclusion: We should be cautious when estimating the effects of artificial intelligence on labour productivity," Natixis warned.
In a globalised economy, there are other reasons to doubt whether the potential gains of AI will be felt evenly across the board.
On the one hand, there is the risk of a "race to the bottom", according to Reuters, as governments compete for AI investment with increasingly lax regulation. On the other, the barriers to luring that investment might be so high as to leave many poorer countries behind.
"You have to have the right infrastructure – huge computing capacity," Stefano Scarpetta told Reuters. Scarpetta is the Director of Employment, Labour and Social Affairs at the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).
"We have the G7 Hiroshima Process, we need to go further to the G20 and UN," he said.
Scarpetta also advocated the expansion of an accord, at an upcoming May summit of the Group of Seven (G7) powers, to jointly seek to better understand the opportunities and challenges of generative AI.
Will AI be an economic blessing or curse: Worker power?
Innovation, it turns out, is the easy bit. The hard part is making it work for everyone – which is where the politics come in.
For MIT's Johnson, the arrival of railways in 19th century England at a moment of rapid democratic reform allowed those advances to be enjoyed by wider society. Be it through faster transport of fresh food or a first taste of leisure travel, everybody in society benefited in a way or another.
Similar democratic gains elsewhere helped millions enjoy the fruits of technology advances well into the 20th century. But Johnson contends that this started changing with the aggressive shareholder capitalism that has marked the last four decades, an era inaugurated by Thatcher and Nixon.
For example, the automated self-checkout, he argues, is a case in point.
Groceries do not become cheaper, shoppers' lives are not transformed and no new task is created – just the profit gain from the reduction of labour costs.
Worker groups, which have lost much of the clout they had before the 1980s, identify AI as a potential threat to workers' rights as well as employment. For example if there is no human control on AI-steered hiring and firing decisions.
Mary Towers is an employment rights policy officer at Britain's Trades Union Congress.
She cited to Reuters the importance of unions "having statutory consultation rights, having the ability to collectively bargain around technology at work".
That is just one of several factors that will help determine how AI shapes our economic lives. This spans from antitrust policies that ensure healthy competition among AI suppliers through to re-training of workforces, to enable preparedness for the coming era of AI.
An OECD survey of some 5,300 workers published in July suggested that AI could benefit job satisfaction, health and wages. But it was seen as posing risks around privacy, reinforcing workplace biases and pushing people to overwork.
"The question is: will AI exacerbate existing inequalities or could it actually help us get back to something much fairer?" said Johnson, will AI be an economic blessing or curse?
