The consequences on the implantation and development of artificial intelligence (AI) are focusing the public debate. Alan Turing feared that he had contributed to creating a monster if he did not orient himself and steer correctly. One of the fields where more uncertainty is generated is in the workplace. Sam Altman alerted Pedro Sánchez that “with AI there will be companies of 1,000 million run by a single person.”
Brynjolfsson and McAfee in The second machine age argue that AI will lead to a polarization of employment between those who will be replaced by technology and those who will not, because they have cognitive and creative skills. They speak of the “paradox of productivity” in which wages are not keeping up with the increase in productivity generated by AI; They argue that technology is contributing to greater inequality, and that while some individuals and businesses benefit, others face hardship.
In the 19th century, industrial mechanization produced a scenario similar to the current one; it implied a significant decrease in the use of tasks that could be substituted by technology, but at the same time it allowed a significant increase in production capacity and the appearance of new economic sectors that promoted new jobs that required more training.
In relation to wages, it had a mixed impact: the workers who experienced wage increases were those who had specific training to respond to the growing demand for skilled labor, while the wages of workers displaced by technology fell significantly. As economic historians such as A. Deaton (Nobel Prize winner in Economics) have illustrated, the rise of industrial capitalism led to a remarkable concentration of wealth and an increase in inequalities.
There is no excessively different pattern from the past. Perhaps what we should pay attention to is the speed of the changes. The more technological development, the faster the old social, cultural and political structures are affected.
That is why it is necessary to think of new political architectures that allow the new technology to be democratically regulated and directed towards the common good. Avoid the concentration of wealth generated by AI as a preamble to the concentration of authoritarian power. Orient it towards structural challenges such as climate change or social justice. And harness AI to transform the conflicting relationships between capital and labor and build a new paradigm. The welfare state must provide support to workers who lose out in the technological transition, and business relations enter a new dimension.
Paul Lafarge wrote a delicious work in the 19th century, Right to laziness, where he theorized about how technology can free up time to carry out personal development activities that lead us to happiness. Perhaps the AI ??will allow it, it will depend on who and how controls it.
