A Nobel laureate in economics explains how artificial intelligence will affect inequality—and how solutions such as a shorter work week might mitigate its negative effects
For the first time since the 1960s, Hollywood writers and actors are on strike concurrently. One of the joint movement’s inspirations is generative artificial intelligence—the term for programs that produce humanlike text, images, audio and video more quickly and cheaply than artists. The strikers fear studios’ use of generative AI tools will replace or devalue human labor.
I don’t think AI is at the point where it can be trusted on its own, but I think it’s a very powerful tool for doing a wide class of work that involves a lot of routine. Somebody trained ChatGPT on my data, and [I tested it] to see how well it did in answering journalist questions. I made up the questions, and I reviewed the answers. And I thought on half the questions, it did perfectly reasonably. And on three, it was totally wrong.
Could we end up in a situation where human-created work is a premium product, the way buyers might be willing to pay more for hand-woven sweaters than for machine-made ones? I’m very worried. In a way, robots have replaced routine physical work. And AI now is replacing routine white-collar work—or not replacing [it] but reducing the demand. So jobs that were routine white-collar, I think, will be at risk. And there are enough of those that it would have a macroeconomic effect on the level of inequality. It could amplify the sense of disillusionment: [in places where deindustrialization occurred, there was a] rise to the deaths of despair.
Sure, two things: We increase aggregate demand to keep the economy closer to full employment, and we have active labor market policies to train or retrain people for the new jobs [created by AI]. It may be that if we have good, distributed policies, people may say, “Well, our standard of living is sufficiently high—I don’t need that many material goods.” And so they’ll accept more leisure; we might move to a 30-hour week.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Extra Time: Roosevelt Hotel cannot fit more migrants, Mayor Adams warns spacing issue will worsenBill Ritter interviews Commissioner Kavanagh about the dangers of lithium-ion battery fires, and he talks to an expert about a third Trump indictment.
Read more »
'This Barbie has a Nobel Prize': Malala Yousafzai jokes husband is 'just Ken' | CNNMalala Yousafzai went to see the “Barbie” box office hit with her husband Asser Malik.
Read more »
Malala Yousafzai and Husband Are The Ultimate “She's Barbie and He's Just Ken” DuoThe Nobel peace prize winner posted a photo with her husband, Asser Malik, playfully ribbing him and professing her love for Greta Gerwig's film: “This Barbie has a Nobel Prize. He's just Ken.”
Read more »
Malala Yousafzai and husband join 'Barbie' craze: 'This Barbie has a Nobel Prize. He's just Ken''I'm Kenough,' said the husband of Malala Yousafzai, who is the youngest person to receive a Nobel Peace Prize for her activism supporting girls' education.
Read more »
Myanmar’s Aung San Suu Kyi to be pardoned for 5 offensesThe Nobel Laureate, who last week moved from prison to house arrest in the capital, Naypyitaw, has been in detention since the military seized power in a coup in early 2021.
Read more »