Anger over AI’s role in exacerbating inequality could endanger the technology’s future. In her new book Cogs and Monsters: What Economics Is, and What It Should Be, Diane Coyle, an economist at Cambridge University, argues that the digital economy requires new ways of thinking about progress. “Whatever we mean by the economy growing, by things getting better, the gains will have to be more evenly shared than in the recent past,” she writes. “An economy of tech millionaires or billionaires and gig workers, with middle-income jobs undercut by automation, will not be politically sustainable.”
Improving living standards and increasing prosperity for more people will require greater use of digital technologies to boost productivity in various sectors, including health care and construction, says Coyle. But people can’t be expected to embrace the changes if they’re not seeing the benefits—if they’re just seeing good jobs being destroyed.
In a recent interview with MIT Technology Review, Coyle said she fears that tech’s inequality problem could be a roadblock to deploying AI. “We’re talking about disruption,” she says. “These are transformative technologies that change the ways we spend our time every day, that change business models that succeed.” To make such “tremendous changes,” she adds, “you need social buy-in.”
Instead, says Coyle, resentment is simmering among many as the benefits are perceived to go to elites in a handful of prosperous cities.
In the US, for instance, during much of the 20th century the various regions of the country were—in the language of economists—“converging,” and financial disparities decreased. Then, in the 1980s, came the onslaught of digital technologies, and the trend reversed itself. Automation wiped out many manufacturing and retail jobs. New, well-paying tech jobs were clustered in a few cities.
The dominance of a few cities in the invention and commercialization of AI means that geographical disparities in wealth will continue to soar. Not only will this foster political and social unrest, but it could, as Coyle suggests, hold back the sorts of AI technologies needed for regional economies to grow.
Part of the solution could lie in somehow loosening the stranglehold that Big Tech has on defining the AI agenda. That will likely take increased federal funding for research independent of the tech giants. Muro and others have suggested hefty federal funding to help create US regional innovation centers, for example.
1. Coyle argues that economic growth should ______.
2. In Paragraph 2, digital technologies should be used to ______.
3. What does Coyle fear about transformative technologies?
4. Several cities are mentioned to ______.
5. With regard to concern,the author suggests ______.
