The world needs a pro-human AI agenda

Let's get real about AI.

- Daron Acemoglu

These are uncertain and confusing times. Not only are we contending with pandemics, climate change, societal aging in major economies, and rising geopolitical tensions, but artificial intelligence is poised to change the world as we know it. What remains to be seen is how quickly things will change and for whose benefit.

If you listen to industry insiders or technology reporters at leading newspapers, you might think artificial general intelligence (AGI)—AI technologies that can perform any human cognitive task—is just around the corner. Accordingly, there is much debate about whether these amazing capabilities will make us prosperous beyond our wildest dreams (with less hyperbolic observers estimating more than 1-2% faster GDP growth), or instead bring about the end of human civilization, with superintelligent AI models becoming our masters.

But if you look at what is going on in the real economy, you will not find any break with the past so far. There is no evidence yet of AI delivering revolutionary productivity benefits. Contrary to what many technologists promised, we still need radiologists (more than before, in fact), journalists, paralegals, accountants, office workers, and human drivers. As I noted recently, we should not expect much more than about 5% of what humans do to be replaced by AI over the next decade. It will take significantly longer for AI models to acquire the judgment, multi-dimensional reasoning abilities, and the social skills necessary for most jobs, and for AI and computer vision technologies to advance to the point where they can be combined with robots to perform high-precision physical tasks (such as manufacturing and construction).