Is the abundance brought by AI a trap? Economist: Wealth distribution is the biggest challenge.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a landmark technology of the era, but how it will ultimately shape our future remains a highly controversial issue.

For technological optimists, they view AI as a tool to improve life and believe it heralds a future of material abundance.

However, this outcome is far from certain. Even if the technological potential of AI is realized and those once-insurmountable problems are solved, how will this "abundance" be utilized?

In Australia's food economy, we can already see this contradiction on a smaller scale. According to Australian government data, the country wastes a total of about 7.6 million tons of food each year, with an average per capita waste of about 312 kilograms.

Meanwhile, one in eight Australians faces food shortages, mainly because they don't have enough money to buy the food they need.

What does this indicate? It shows that we are insufficient in fairly distributing the abundant fruits promised by the AI revolution.

01.

AI May Disrupt the Existing Economic Model

As economist Lionel Robbins stated when laying the foundation for modern market economics: Economics studies the relationship between "ends (what we want)" and "scarce means with alternative uses (what we have)."

The operating logic of the market is considered to be "allocating scarce resources to infinite demands." Scarcity affects prices, which is the cost people are willing to pay for goods and services; and the need to meet the expenditure requirements for necessities of life forces (most) people to earn money through work while producing more goods and services.

The promise of AI to "bring abundance and solve complex medical, engineering, and social problems" is in irreconcilable contradiction with this market logic.

This is also directly related to the concern that "technology will cause millions of workers to lose their jobs." If people lose paid work, how will they earn money? And how will the market operate?

02.

Meeting Our Needs and Desires

However, technology is not the only factor leading to unemployment. A relatively unique feature of the market economy is that even when supplies seem abundant, it may still result in a situation where large-scale demands go unmet through unemployment or low wages.

As economist John Maynard Keynes revealed: Economic recessions and depressions may be products of the market system itself. Even when raw materials, factories, and labor are idle, many people still fall into poverty.

In Australia, the most recent economic downturn was not caused by market failure but by the public health crisis brought about by the pandemic. However, this crisis still revealed a potential solution to the economic challenges faced by "technology-driven abundance."

At that time, the government implemented policies such as increasing subsidy amounts, canceling work tests, and relaxing means tests. Even though the economic production capacity declined, the problems of poverty and food shortages were significantly alleviated.

Many countries around the world also implemented similar policies, with over 200 countries introducing cash payment measures. This practice during the pandemic further fueled the call to "combine technological progress with a universal basic income."

The Australian Basic Income Lab, jointly established by Macquarie University, the University of Sydney, and the Australian National University, is focusing its research on this.

If everyone can receive a guaranteed income sufficient to cover the necessities of life, the market economy may successfully complete its transformation, and the dividends brought by technology may be more widely shared.

03.

Welfare or Entitlement?

When talking about a universal basic income, we must clearly define it. Some versions of the universal basic income scheme may still lead to huge wealth inequalities.

My colleague Elise Klein from the Australian Basic Income Lab and Stanford University professor James Ferguson advocate that the universal basic income should not be designed as "welfare" but as an "entitlement."

They believe that the wealth created through technological progress and social cooperation is the result of collective human labor and should be equally enjoyed by all as a basic human right, just as we regard a country's natural resources as the collective property of its citizens.

The debate about the universal basic income predates the current issues triggered by AI. In the early 20th century, there was also a similar wave of concern in the UK: At that time, industrialization and automation promoted economic growth but did not eliminate poverty; instead, they threatened employment.

Even earlier, the Luddites tried to destroy new machines used to drive down wages. Market competition may generate the impetus for innovation, but it also shows great imbalance in distributing the risks and rewards of technological change.

04.

Universal Basic Services

Besides resisting AI, another solution is to change the socioeconomic system for "distributing the dividends of AI." British writer Aaron Bastani proposed a radical vision of "fully automated luxury communism."

He welcomes technological progress and believes it should improve living standards and provide people with more leisure time. This vision is a radical version of the "modest goal" described in the book Abundance, which is favored by the Labour government recently.

Bastani's preferred solution is not a universal basic income but universal basic services.

Instead of giving people money to buy what they need, why not directly provide the necessities of life - such as free healthcare, care, transportation, education, energy, etc.?

Of course, this means changing the way AI and other technologies are applied - essentially "socializing" their use to ensure that technology meets collective needs.

05.

Utopia Is Not Inevitable

The proposals for a universal basic income or universal basic services indicate that even from an optimistic perspective, AI itself is unlikely to bring about a utopia.

On the contrary, as Peter Frase stated: The combination of technological progress and ecological collapse may give rise to very different futures. This difference is not only reflected in our collective production capacity but also in how we politically decide "who gets what" and "under what conditions."

Technology companies run by billionaires hold great power, which may foreshadow a situation closer to what former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis calls "techno-feudalism," where the control of technology and online platforms gives rise to new forms of authoritarianism.

Waiting for the "nirvana" of technology to arrive will make us miss the real possibilities in the present. We already have enough food to feed everyone, and we already know how to eliminate poverty. We don't need AI to tell us this.

Original source:

1.https://theconversation.com/if-ai-takes-most-of-our-jobs-money-as-we-know-it-will-be-over-what-then-262338

Translated by the MetaverseHub team.

This article is from the WeChat official account MetaverseHub. Author: MetaverseHub. Republished by 36Kr with permission.