Larry Elliott’s article about the influence of artificial intelligence on the workforce elicits feedback from readers.
As stated in the article “AI will end the west’s weak productivity and low growth. But who exactly will benefit?” on April 7th, the accelerated progress of self-teaching AI poses an unparalleled danger to mankind, similar to uncontrollable climate change, because we cannot rely on previous occurrences to predict our future prospects. This becomes particularly significant when AI is connected to supercomputing or quantum computing capabilities.
Emergent properties arise in complex systems like these, where the collective output exceeds the sum of individual components. Through the use of large language models, even “dumb” neural networks such as ChatGPT have resulted in more refined and flexible generative AI. With these systems becoming more intricate and potent, and the sources of their learning as well as human interactions growing exponentially, it is reasonable to hypothesize that AI may eventually develop its own consciousness and cognition.
One potential solution suggested is for governments to shift their focus from taxing labor and employment to imposing taxes on business applications of AI, software, and robots, particularly those that replace human workers. By doing so, it would prioritize human labor over machine contributions and could potentially impede the uncontrollable expansion of AI as costs become prohibitive. The generated revenues could fund an AI oversight agency, as well as support retraining programs and other initiatives that aim to improve human welfare, which Larry Elliott promotes.
