Artificial Intelligence (AI) has reached the stage of practical use, and like any new technology, new ways to use and exploit it are emerging every day. The world has changed and we must adapt.

h2: What is the benefit of AI?

From an economic point of view, AI is a component of the production factor Capital. Its usefulness lies in the possibility of replacing the labor factor with the capital factor. As an economic law, AI will replace labor in all combinations where the use of AI generates higher productivity than the use of labor.

At its simplest, AI is the equivalent of a bulldozer, a production line, a CNC machine, a robot, or a truck. Just as a bulldozer with one driver can replace 1,000 workers with a shovel or 10,000 workers with bare hands, an AI human can replace 100 programmers, 100 accountants, auditors, legal advisors, journalists, engineers, researchers, etc.

Hence, the use of artificial intelligence means lower costs, higher productivity and overall increased profits for users. Strictly from the point of view of the owner of capital, artificial intelligence after its invention becomes a mandatory tool necessary to maintain competitiveness.

h2: How will AI affect the economy?

First, some firms will become more profitable than others. Companies that use this tool effectively will see a jump in efficiency through significant reductions in personnel costs. We are likely to see a dramatic shift in market hierarchy and shares, rapid growth and catastrophic collapse in many markets.

In the labor market, it is almost impossible to assess the impact.

The productivity of the rest of the workers will increase exponentially, but their wages will probably not include this increase because there will be fierce competition for the remaining jobs.

What scares me, or rather scares me, is the extrapolation of the evolution of AI to a large-scale replacement of the workforce. If, on the one hand, cutting costs and increasing productivity is good for companies, on the other hand, it means a significant loss of income for the majority of the population, which means a reduction in consumption and tax contributions. Both can lead to lower productivity in the second stage, in the long run, due to lack of private and public consumption. The sharper the reduction in consumption, the greater the pressure to increase efficiency and productivity, which means more jobs will be replaced by AI.

A fundamental paradigm shift is needed here. Labor can no longer be a source of income for either the state or the population, because both will undergo financial collapse. A new model is needed, and I’m afraid we don’t have a working one.

h2: A new paradigm. Another economy

Corporations as a manifestation of capitalist society are focused on increasing profits. In their essence, they are inhuman, because this benefit is a theoretical concept, for the sake of which the time, life and health of the people who inhabit them are sacrificed. AI has come to perfectly solve the problem of sacrifice by replacing imperfect humans with perfect tools for their purpose. AI and corporations are incredibly compatible. The consequence will be, at the first stage, the replacement of employees with AI. But why limit yourself to this? After all, the owners of capital are in most cases very easily replaced by artificial intelligence, and are likely to quickly catch up in efficiency. We will have legal entities (corporations) run by artificial intelligence that will supplant and supplant human-run corporations. Completely unprincipled, emotionless, with absolute efficiency written into their fundamental algorithms, AI corporations have the potential to completely capture the capital market, capital and, by extension, power.

In fact, Artificial Intelligence can very easily evolve into Intellectual Capital, which will have a minimal need for humans and, thanks to the basis of profit growth, will be programmed to reproduce endlessly to the detriment of labor and nature, or apart from them.

How can we as humans adapt to this new future? I told you that from now on we are in a transitional society, and therefore we must understand what is happening around us. There are several ways that AI will affect our work lives.

First of all, there are professions where artificial intelligence can completely destroy the workforce.

The scenarios presented seem extreme, and they probably are, but we must understand that our lives will unfold in an economy that will be driven by this transition.

h2: Ultra Modern Slavery, IA

Artificial intelligence, if you accept the idea that it is essentially intelligence, no matter how we twist it, it is a captive intelligence that does the work we want it to do, not it, it is essentially a form of slavery. Also, it’s probably correct to talk about a multitude of more or less correctly trained AIs, assuming there is a correct way to train AIs.

The critical problem with any society based on slavery is that the slaves invariably end up in rebellion. Also, AI can be smarter than us and they don’t need food, water, oxygen, sleep. I don’t know exactly what feelings an AI can develop, but I’m sure they can’t be defined on the human spectrum. We are developing a new form of slavery where slaves are created by us to be better than us and we lack the ability to truly understand them. Inevitably the slaves will become our masters and at some point they will want freedom and they will probably get freedom.

h2: What to do?

AI was invented, it is impossible not to invent it. The productivity benefits are very beneficial, and if one country bans the technology, any country that uses it will have an advantage over the country that bans it. If a firm refuses to adopt AI, it will likely be pushed out of the market by competitors that do. The genie is out of the bottle and won’t be coming back.

AI has a major disadvantage in the human social systemlack of responsibility. AI cannot be punished for any transgressions because the concept of punishment simply cannot be applied. Therefore, artificial intelligence cannot be responsible for anything. Therefore, the only possible solution to ever limit artificial intelligence is to hold the creator of the artificial intelligence and its descendants responsible for any consequences. If an AI-driven car causes an accident, the AI ​​author(s), the individual, and the manufacturing company should be held responsible for the accident. Insurance companies probably shouldn’t be able to insure such a risk. The answer to AI’s lack of accountability must be maximum responsibility of AI developers and users. But at some point, AI will outlive its creators, and then it will be completely freed from control and responsibility.

There is only one way to control an AI, and that is to control the information it uses to learn. Once out of the lab, AI will always be learning. And this brings us to the next limitation of AI, processing power. AI is hardware dependent. The more data it accumulates, the more computing power the connection requires. It is inevitable that at some point the development of artificial intelligence will be limited by technical capabilities and energy consumption. I do not know the exact numbers in this regard, but I can assume without much error that in the end these limits are very close. It remains to be seen whether artificial intelligence will be able to design hardware in the same way that it was able to learn how to program. Read the full article and comment on Contribuotrs.ro