The race against the robots and the fallacy of the giant cheesecake: Immediate and imagined impacts of artificial intelligence
Wim Naudé
#2019-005
After a number of AI-winters, AI is back with a boom. There are concerns
that it will disrupt society. The immediate concern is whether labor can
win a `race against the robots' and the longer-term concern is whether
an artificial general intelligence (super-intelligence) can be
controlled. This paper describes the nature and context of these
concerns, reviews the current state of the empirical and theoretical
literature in economics on the impact of AI on jobs and inequality, and
discusses the challenge of AI arms races. It is concluded that despite
the media hype neither massive jobs losses nor a `Singularity' are
imminent. In part, this is because current AI, based on deep learning,
is expensive and dificult for (especially small) businesses to adopt,
can create new jobs, and is an unlikely route to the invention of a
super-intelligence. Even though AI is unlikely to have either utopian or
apocalyptic impacts, it will challenge economists in coming years. The
challenges include regulation of data and algorithms; the (mis-)
measurement of value added; market failures, anti-competitive behaviour
and abuse of market power; surveillance, censorship, cybercrime; labor
market discrimination, declining job quality; and AI in emerging
economies.
JEL Classification: O47, O33, J24, E21, E25
Keywords: Technology, artificial intelligence, productivity, labor
demand, innovation, inequality