Daron Acemoglu
NBER Working Paper No. 29247
September 2021
Abstract
This essay discusses several potential economic, political and social costs of the current path of AI technologies. I argue that if AI continues to be deployed along its current trajectory and remains unregulated, it may produce various social, economic and political harms. These include: damaging competition, consumer privacy and consumer choice; excessively automating work, fueling inequality, inefficiently pushing down wages, and failing to improve worker productivity; and damaging political discourse, democracy's most fundamental lifeblood. Although there is no conclusive evidence suggesting that these costs are imminent or substantial, it may be useful to understand them before they are fully realized and become harder or even impossible to reverse, precisely because of AI's promising and wide-reaching potential. I also suggest that these costs are not inherent to the nature of AI technologies, but are related to how they are being used and developed at the moment - to empower corporations and governments against workers and citizens. As a result, efforts to limit and reverse these costs may need to rely on regulation and policies to redirect AI research. Attempts to contain them just by promoting competition may be insufficient.
Conclusion
In this essay, I explored several potential economic, political and social costs of the current path of AI technologies. I suggested that if AI continues to be deployed along its current trajectory and remains unregulated, then it can harm competition, consumer privacy and consumer choice, it may excessively automate work, fuel inequality, inefficiently push down wages, and fail to improve productivity. It may also make political discourse increasingly distorted, cutting one of the lifelines of democracy. I also mentioned several other potential social costs from the current path of AI research.
I should emphasize again that all of these potential harms are theoretical. Although there is much evidence indicating that not all is well with the deployment of AI technologies and the problems of increasing market power, disappearance of work, inequality, low wages, and meaningful challenges to democratic discourse and practice are all real, we do not have sufficient evidence to be sure that AI has been a serious contributor to these troubling trends. Nevertheless, precisely because AI is a promising technological platform, aiming to transform every sector of the economy and every aspect of our social lives, it is imperative for us to study what its downsides are, especially on its current trajectory. It is in this spirit that I discussed the potential costs of AI this paper.
