The NHS is addressing the shortage of medical professional by filling the gap with artificial intelligence as a was to increase the efficiency of the staff it has. While that doesn't seem on the face of it like job displacement, it really is in two senses. First, it reduces demand for medical staff which in effect means in future, were supply to increase that additional supply would no longer be needed. And secondly, it demonstrates more broadly how human skills are replaceable by AI. It also reinforces the idea that highly skilled knowledge work is at least if not more vulnerable to AI replacement than other kinds of work.
With potentially mass unemployment looming, two possible futures seem to emerge at least from an ideological perspective. One involves state intervention and financial redistribution, the other leaves everything to economics and markets. Left to market forces, income inequality will rise, which in turn will fuel social unrest, populism and the further erosion of trust in institutions in general. The upshot will likely be a more authoritarian crackdown possibly with deep political undercurrents.
Redistribution will be less unpopular in countries accustomed to more state intervention such as France Germany and even China. As a result these kinds of states will likely suffer less dislocation even while seeming to fare less well economically in the short run. And while it's true that as Keynes noted, "in the long run we are all dead" how we get there makes a difference.
No comments:
Post a Comment