myIon Musk isn’t most people’s idea of a classic technophobe, so when the owner of Twitter warns of the dangers of artificial intelligence, it pays to sit up and take notice. Fearful that a new generation of increasingly intelligent machines threatens life on Earth as we know it, Musk was one of many at the forefront of technological change who called for a six-month timeout on training new systems. of AI.
There’s nothing new in the idea that the machines are coming, and they’re going to get us. Techno-optimists are correct in saying that the Luddites made the same arguments in the early 19th century. For this reason, the ChatGPT chatbot is to the fourth industrial revolution what the jenny spinner was to the first: a product that symbolizes the dawn of a new era.
In the past, there has been a pattern to events. New technology has arrived on the scene and has offered the prospect of doing things faster and better. Fears of mass unemployment have been raised as machines take over jobs previously held by humans. Eventually, the pessimists were proven wrong and new technology has led to higher levels of employment.
There is no doubt that AI will be a game changer and may end a long period of low productivity and low growth common in Western economies since the global financial crisis erupted 15 years ago. As was the case when tractors replaced farm workers, a single machine will be able to do what countless workers used to do. That is really not in doubt.
That is the question is who will benefit from the productivity boost. What if a handful of tech giants grab all the profits? What if history doesn’t repeat itself and AI destroys more jobs than it creates? What if AI leads to a net increase in employment, but the new jobs pay less than the old ones? Bottom line, what if it’s different this time? That may be the case.
Much of the debate about the impact of AI is based on conjecture. There have been many studies that have tried to estimate the number of jobs that will be affected – potentially numbering in the hundreds of millions worldwide – but no one knows for sure. That being said, certain conclusions can be drawn with a reasonable degree of confidence.
One is that the pace of technological advancement will not slow down and will likely continue to accelerate. ChatGPT was launched last November and a new version was already available in March. Musk et al’s call for a six-month moratorium must be seen in the context of the geopolitical struggle between the US and China. Neither superpower wants to give the other a chance to move on. The chances of Washington and Beijing meeting and agreeing to a joint pause seem remote.
Despite the speed at which technology is advancing, a second takeaway is that there will not be an immediate root-and-branch transformation of economies. Machines are expensive and workers are cheap. In addition, companies have invested heavily in their existing systems, and these sunk costs mean it will take time for the impact of AI to show up in investment, employment and productivity figures.
However, once the change occurs, it is likely to be highly disruptive, because a large number of middle-class white-collar jobs are at risk. This will be a break from the past, when previous waves of technological advancement made it possible for workers displaced from low-paying jobs to find higher-paying jobs in the new jobs created. People who were no longer needed as farm laborers found work in the factories.
AI poses a challenge to this model because of Moravec’s Paradox – the notion that for robots, hard problems are easy and easy problems are hard. Machines can wipe the floor with chess grandmasters, but they have more trouble removing and cleaning pieces at the end of the game — tasks that involve abilities of mobility and perception that have evolved in humans over millions of years.
But jobs that involve empathy and basic motor skills, for example social care work, tend to be low-paying. That suggests that jobs with higher AI risk are likely to pay better than those created. There will be a boost to productivity and growth from increased use of AI, but as it stands, the gains will be highly concentrated.
The bottom line is that policymakers need to use the limited time available to them to respond to the obvious challenges. AI has the potential to bring great benefits, but it also carries risks that go beyond economics into the realms of privacy and ethics.
government release White paper last week, science and technology secretary Michelle Donelan said she wanted AI to be used to make the UK a “smarter, healthier and happier place to live and work”. All of which sounds wonderful, with echoes of a John Maynard Keynes essay. wrote in 1930predicting that 100 years from now, greater prosperity would allow people to work 15 hours a week.
Keynes’s vision has yet to materialize, and neither has Donelan’s, unless urgent attention is paid to the 3Rs of AI: a global regulatory system that sets common standards for the use and development of AI; retraining to prepare the workforce for the inevitable change; and redistribution to ensure that economic benefits are shared. As with the climate crisis, the other existential threat of our time, time is ticking.
