AI's paradox: promise of abundance and fear of scarcity
This opinion piece explores the paradox of AI, contrasting the promise of economic abundance with the historical tendency for new technologies to create social and political inequality. The author draws parallels between the Industrial Revolution and the current AI boom, emphasizing the need for institutional management of wealth distribution.
Why it matters
It provides a critical framework for understanding the potential long-term societal impacts of AI beyond just productivity gains.
--> Home Opinion AI's paradox: promise of abundance and fear of scarcity Agricultural productivity increased, transportation improved and industrial production outpaced previous eras
facebook --> twitter --> whatsup --> linkded --> email MORE (3) Messenger Whatsapp --> The writer holds PhD in Administrative Sciences and teaches at the University of Plymouth, UK. Email: zeb.khan@plymouth.ac.uk Artificial intelligence is increasingly presented as the technology that may finally solve humanity's ancient economic problem: scarcity. Elon Musk has gone so far as to predict an "age of abundance" in which AI and robots make human labour largely unnecessary and money eventually loses much of its purpose. It is an extraordinary vision. But history should make us cautious. Technologies that solve economic problems often create political and social ones.
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