The Rise of Artificial Intelligence and Inequality
It is undeniable that the rise of artificial intelligence will greatly impact society in a number of ways. There is the potential for great benefits, but also for a widening of the levels of inequality that already exist today. So which way will it go?
In the coming years, many aspects of our lives, from the personal to the professional and beyond, will be greatly impacted by the rise of artificial intelligence. As AI shapes businesses and the economy, there will be an increase in human jobs being displaced by robots. According to Gartner, 85% of customer interactions will be managed without a human by the year 2020. Nonetheless, many have predicted that AI will be a very positive tool for transforming education, transportation, health services, and more. For example, Watson, an IBM supercomputer that combines AI and analytical software for optimal performance as a “question answering” machine, is already heavily engaged in efforts to help healthcare providers diagnose diseases, identify personalized treatments, and more. Still, because the rise of AI will have such a profound impact on society, it is impossible and irresponsible to ignore the potential for AI to make the world a more prosperous place for all. The potential impacts of AI transform scientists into architects of social change, as the technology that they are pioneering has the power to radically alter society and affect change, for better or for worse.
One of the most pressing issues that faces today’s world is global inequality. According to inequality.org, “The world’s wealthiest individuals, those owning over $100,000 in assets, total only 8.1 percent of the global population but own 84.6 percent of global wealth.” Wealth disparity in the United States is particularly rampant, with the gap running at least twice as wide as the rest of the world.
This rise of inequality coupled with the rise of AI technology creates an interesting opportunity space for positive social change. AINow released a primer on Inequality and AI, in which it describes the ways in which AI “promises to reshape the contours of inequality.” As explained, AI has great potential to redistribute wealth by generating economic value, both by creating new products and by reducing costs through automation and other innovative processes. Still, in many cases, when wealth is generated, it trickles back up to the wealthy. The primer states, “If the vast majority of economic value is distributed to those already among the wealthiest today, then the expansion of AI technologies could widen existing wealth and income disparities. In such a scenario, AI would exacerbate inequality.”
This does not necessarily have to be the case, however. As AINow explains, “If automation reduces the costs of creating certain goods and services (and these savings are passed on to consumers), AI could narrow the gap between the haves and havenots (at least in terms of access to these goods and services). In this case, AI would increase the standard of living overall, and could even have a progressive redistributive effect.”
The reality is that right now, we sit at a juncture between negative and positive social change as it relates to the rise of artificial intelligence. There are many areas where AI has the potential to have either a negative impact, or a positive impact, and it is hard to tell which way it will go. Furthermore, it is hard to predict whether or not the positive impacts of AI will be inclusive, or whether they will further widen the gap between the wealthy and the poor. Employment, for example, will be greatly impacted. The rise of AI could lead to the rise of new ways of living. Those whose jobs have been displaced by AI would have the opportunity to pursue other forms of employment or ways of making a living. At the same time, AI will make some workers’ skills completely obsolete, displacing workers and forcing them to find new work that may be of lower quality, lower pay, or lower stability. In this worst-case scenario, the displacement of jobs caused by the rise of AI could drive certain sections of the workforce into poverty, exacerbating inequality in the process.
AI will also play an increased role in high-stakes decision making- everything from determining who has access to credit, to deciding how a driverless car will operate in a situation that poses a moral dilemma that can involve life or death. On the positive side, AI has the potential to mitigate the negative effects of human bias in decision making. Some believe that AI, with access to high levels of data and the ability to detect patterns that evade the recognition of humans, could lead to more fair decisions. On the flip side, some people fear that AI will only serve to magnify human bias. If the data used reflects implicit human biases, the AI trained on such data could replicate these biases, rather than eliminating them. This could lead to continued social inequality that is potentially more widely accepted for being seen as a product of “intelligence” rather than human prejudice.
Because of the great potential that AI has to shape a society that is already very unequal, scientists are forced to consider the implications and repercussions of the work that they are doing. That being said, the onus does not fall on scientists and developers alone. Business, governments, civil society, and the general public must also play a part.
Enter The Partnership on AI, a coalition “established to study and formulate best practices on AI technologies, to advance the public’s understanding of AI, and to serve as an open platform for discussion and engagement about AI and its influences on people and society.” Many high profile organizations are engaged, including Amazon, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, and Apple. These organizations are engaging with scientific and nonprofit organizations as well as ethics experts to inform their work and to guide the development of AI in a way that positively benefits society.
The partnership has developed shared goals, which include:
- Supporting the research and recommendation of best practices across a variety of areas, including ethics, fairness, inclusivity, privacy, transparency, trustworthiness, reliability, and more.
- Advancing public understanding of AI and its potential benefits and risks and serving as an expert point of contact, regularly updating the public and others in the AI field on the current state of AI progress.
- Creating an open platform for discussion and engagement for AI researchers and key stakeholders to communicate openly with one another about important issues related to AI and its effects on society
In addition, it has developed a list of tenets that spell out how the partnerships aims to ensure that AI is leveraged to “to help humanity address important global challenges such as climate change, food, inequality, health, and education.”
As discussed, the rise of AI will undoubtedly have a large impact on various areas of society. In today’s day and age, where the pressing issue of global inequality is on the rise in many places, it is more important than ever to consider the ways in which AI can be used as a tool for good and a catalyst for positive social change. This requires many different groups, from developers, to business leaders, to government bodies, to also consider the potential negative effects of AI and do whatever possible to mitigate these effects. With efforts such as the Partnership on AI, it seems that this issue is being taken seriously, which is promising. Moving forward, it is important to increase engagement and awareness surrounding the potential implications of AI, and to continue to drive discussions and development around the ways in which AI can be used as a tool to reduce inequality globally.
