“The rise of robots and artificial intelligence threatens to upend the very fabric of our society, leaving a wake of unemployment in its path. As machines become increasingly advanced, they have the potential to replace human workers in a vast array of industries. The march of progress shows no mercy, and soon, no job may be safe from the cold, mechanical grasp of automation. The future of work, and indeed of humanity itself, hangs in the balance as the machines continue to advance.”
ChatGPT-originated comment in response to Tom Whipple
“On the one hand, AI will bring unimaginable wealth. On the other hand, unless something changes, most of us will get none of it.”
Sam Altman, Chief Executive of OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT
The final comment in last week’s Thought was about ChatGPT, the new drafting process driven by Artificial Intelligence, and throughout the past week there has been a raft of media comment on the extent to which it will change the future of study and of work. One of the best articles was written by Tom Whipple, Science Editor of The Times.
He drew particular attention to blog posts by Sam Altman, Chief Executive of OpenAI, the company which has created ChatGPT. These are well worth studying: however, his most comprehensive comments on the impact of technology date back some years now. For example, ‘Technology and Wealth Inequality’ was posted in January 2014 — it's somewhat chilling that his recent posts are few and far between.
Artificial Intelligence may present opportunities for UK Chancellor Jeremy Hunt, as he spelt out in his ‘4 Es’ speech which we reported on last week. However, at a human and global level it presents massive challenges in terms of the concentration of wealth and control in a very small number of hands, and in undermining the exercise of human intelligence on a massive scale. Indeed, Tom Whipple quotes Stephen Cave, the director of the Cambridge Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, in concluding that it will only be tasks involving interactions with other human beings that will be reserved for real people on a continuing basis.
Drawing on Altman's blogs, Tom Whipple warns that the value of labour will drop to near zero as power shifts from labour to capital, with deep consequences for self-worth, for employment and perhaps even for human dignity.
Our commentary more than five years ago on 27 November 2017 was called ‘The impact of technological innovation on productivity and wealth’, drawing on an MIT technology review article in June 2013, ‘How technology is destroying jobs’. Three years later, we proposed a way forward for this dilemma which will also address the concerns set out in Tom Whipple’s article, with our August 2020 commentary ‘Dividends please, not space rockets’. This put forward the initial proposal for ‘Stock for Data’, which is now a key part of the Cambridge SHARE research project.
Tom Whipple acknowledges the suggestion from Sam Altman and other commentators that we should consider radical solutions to the challenges presented by AI. If value moves from labour to capital, he says, so too should taxes. By taxing wealth rather than income, redistribution of those taxes could provide Universal Basic Income.
This ‘radical solution’ is almost as depressing as AI’s removal of people’s ability to exercise human intelligence at work: it’s a recipe for subservience for the great majority of humankind. There is a far more creative radical solution — don't tax wealth, but redistribute the equity stock in the wealth creators to the people who use their services and supply them with data and information.
The justification for this is that it’s this human interaction with the tech giants, submitting their data and inputting their engagement into all kinds of online activity, which enables the wealth to be created in the first place. You only have to witness the fluctuations in Meta’s stock market capitalisation to see the massive impact of data on its valuation.
So, let the wealth created and a share of control of these businesses be spread across the billions of people who use their ground-breaking technologies. Let them experience capital gains, receive dividends, and have the right to play their part in stock owner governance, attending meetings and putting forward resolutions and circularisations. Let them become the capitalists of the future; let’s not leave this right purely in the hands of the rich and powerful.
The SHARE project is all about moving to a more egalitarian form of capitalism, and its first conference will be held in Cambridge on Friday 14 April. ‘Stock for Data’ will be one of the key sessions, setting out the challenge to build the academic rigour and research needed for implementing this radical solution for using the technological revolution as a catalyst for spreading wealth, rather than imposing yet more state intermediation through more taxation of wealth.
The project also, however, draws attention to one feature that Artificial Intelligence robots will never share: the human cycle of life and death, as we move forward from generation to generation, and the opportunity this offers for inter-generational rebalancing. It is, after all, the ingenuity of the human mind, not just its intelligence, which drives real innovation — and that is directly linked to generational development (it's what we mean by the phrase ‘standing on the shoulders of giants’).
That ingenuity requires both rational logic and lateral thinking, and it is particularly prevalent in young minds. We can foster and develop it by providing the resources and life skills needed; and by hypothecating inheritance levies for the individual empowerment of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds, we can ensure that all are enabled to share in future wealth creation.
There is a gradually developing awareness among the great tech entrepreneurs that the huge wealth which they have created should not be used on vanity projects such as space tourism — see recent remarks by Bill Gates. The question is: will people like Sam Altman embrace the widespread distribution of their equity stock in order to enable everyone to share in this massive wealth creation, or will this require public policy to mandate the way forward?
Gavin Oldham OBE
Share Radio