CEPR-政策洞察：我们能拥有支持工人的人工智能吗？选择一条为心灵服务的机器之路（英）-2023.10-13页_125kb

Can We Have Pro-Worker AI? Summary

Key Findings

• Digital Technology and Inequality: Over the past 40 years, digital technologies have increased income inequality. Generative AI's impact on inequality depends on its development and application, which can either displace or complement human labor.

• Current AI Trajectory: The private sector favors automation, which displaces workers and worsens inequality by reducing wages and job opportunities, especially for low-skilled workers. This path prioritizes surveillance and lacks worker voice.

• Alternative Path: A human-complementary path exists, where AI augments worker capabilities, enabling higher-quality work and creating new tasks. This can reduce inequality, raise productivity, and boost wages by supporting workers across skill levels, from high-paid to non-college educated individuals.

• Feasibility and Changes Needed: The human-complementary path is possible but requires changes in technological innovation, corporate norms, and government policies to shift incentives toward human capital.

• Policy Recommendations:

  1. Equalize taxes on employing workers and owning equipment to level the playing field.
  2. Update workplace surveillance rules and strengthen worker voice in AI development.
  3. Increase funding for AI research focused on human-complementary applications, especially in education, healthcare, and modern craft work.
  4. Establish a federal AI expertise center to guide regulation and technology adoption.
  5. Create technology certification processes for AI tools in public education and healthcare to ensure human benefits.

Automation Path Implications

• Automation substitutes machines for human tasks, leading to job displacement and downward wage pressure for all workers.
• Unequal impact: Displaced workers compete with lower-wage peers, exacerbating inequality.
• Risks include reduced labor share of income, with most gains flowing to capital owners.

Human-Complementary Path Benefits

• AI can enhance decision-making, knowledge, and expertise for workers in various fields.
• Enables new tasks and roles, such as in education, healthcare, and infrastructure sectors, promoting shared prosperity.
• Evidence from studies shows AI tools like GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT improve productivity and equity.

Conclusion

• Pro-worker AI deployment is achievable but faces barriers from current automation-centric approach and policy bias.
• Public policy and institutional changes are crucial to steer AI toward complementary development.
  • Benefits: Reduces inequality, boosts productivity, creates new job opportunities.