AI is here but will it be able to benefit all of us?

My work has a team that looks into innovative technology, and how this technology might affect our jobs and society. Recently, this team shared on our work social media a video of a chat on all things AI. With all the recent news about AI, and ChatGPT specifically, and because of the significant implications that AI presents, I decided to write a review of the video, and also offer my own opinion about AI in general. Below you can find this review that I shared with my colleagues. I hope you enjoy it!

tldr; AI has vast potential to provide tremendous benefits to society but it also has the potential to only benefit the privileged, with the possibility of making things worse for the rest. It all depends on who controls and has access to the technology, and the type of economic system and system of incentives that it lives in.

I just want to start with acknowledging that Emad does seem super smart. He does come from a hedge fund background and that must be considered when thinking about the context of the conversation. It’s also worth mentioning that someone being an expert or even a genius in one area doesn’t mean they are a genius in every area.

There was an accusation of fear-mongering when it comes to AI and a suggestion that AI is the tool that will be used to solve the world’s problems. Well, I think we already have the capability of solving much of the world’s problems, and I think it’s the same solution to solving the fears many, like myself, have with AI which is “who exactly will own and control the resource and wealth it creates?” As Emad correctly points out, “If it’s controlled by the few, it will be used to control.” But I still get the idea from him that he prefers entrepreneurialism over collective effort and benefit, which I believe are opposing ideas.

In general, I think too much credit is given to technology and our profit-driven economic system on the growth of the so called “middle class”, while too little credit is given to the collective struggle of workers of the past for fighting for their ability to keep more of the value they create when building and using this technology. Many of these gains from employers that created the “middle class” were won by workers threatening to withhold their labour, or brought in by governments concerned by these same threats. I think this aspect is lost on many of these conversations (and in modern political discourse), and that it should be especially considered when discussing technology that will very likely remove the need for many workers, and thus weaken the power workers have. This is where much of the justified fear comes from, in my opinion.

We’ve had tremendous innovation in technology over the past 30 years, yet Millennials are the first generation in recent history to be economically-worse-off than their parent’s generation. So obviously better technology isn’t going to be the magic bullet. Economic inequality is rising. A lot of wealth is being created but it’s not being shared in an as-equitable manner like it once was. The promise of trickle down economics never came to be. Booms come and then go down with a crash and after each one of these cycles, the rich get richer and the rest of us get a little more poor. The number of people suffering from homelessness, drug addiction and mental illness is rising (count my brother in as someone suffering from all three) and suicides shoot up in periods of economic decline. If AI can be used to reverse these features of our current economic system, that would be great. But I am highly skeptical, looking at history and the current trends, that AI will be used to accomplish this, if it even can.

The reality is that there are going to be less jobs for humans thanks to AI, meaning less income and less collective power in the economy. There’s no guarantee that this new technology will open up opportunity for new jobs, as has happened in the past. If that doesn’t come to be, there needs to be a way for humans to still find meaning, make contributions to society, and have their material needs met. There was a quote from the video that suggested “AI enables everyone to be the equivalent of millionaires.” Everyone obviously can’t literally be millionaires and if we want a world without poverty and suffering, we need to understand that. As I’ve mentioned above, it’s going to take a lot more than technology to allow every human to live like a millionaire.

There was also a mention that AI could be used to fix our climate. It might help us better develop and understand models but again, we already know how to begin to fix the climate and it starts with using vastly less fossil fuels than we use now. I just read that BP and Shell are delaying their plans to transition to clean energy. This has little to do with a lack of technology, which they could more than afford, and has everything to do with increasing profits to satisfy shareholders. This is because of our economic system that incentivizes profit growth over everything else. AI by itself will not fix this.

I think whether AI benefits all people or only a few people depends on our ability to evolve our economic system from the one of exploitation, wealth-hoarding, and rent-seeking that we have today. There’s no reason we can’t have innovation under a more evolved and a more democratic system. A system that puts a little less focus on short-term, individual/entrepreneurial success, and a little more on what’s best for our communities in the long-run. After all, many technologies of the past were created under public projects, including nuclear fission (and fusion), space travel, the internet and mRNA technology. Let’s just hope it won’t take the threat of war or a pandemic to get there.