Some changes create economic problems that do not lend themselves to old model solutions. Those models will help to resolve issues like tax reform or educational costs. But some problems do not seem to have either traditional free market or government control answers.
Several of those problems — income mal-distribution, chronic unemployment, and sluggish economic growth — have some economists worried.
As a class, economists tend to worry about things; forces they see at work in the economy that could cause trouble in the future. In that sense they are like ship captains and navigators, the good ones anyway, who worry about near and distant hazards like storms, unexpected currents, uncharted rocks and shoals, or system failures.
The goal of all that worry isn’t to spin it into a full blown anxiety attack but to be prepared to deal with these hazards and forces. Some can be dealt with simply by a course correction to avoid them. Others may require more complex preparation.
Sometimes a hazard can be indicated with a single word, and for economists today that word is “singularity.”
Over the years it has acquired several meanings, including specific ones in mathematics, where they are useful, and in physics where … well, judge for yourself.
Physicists define the first singularity as the moment in time when the entire universe was contained in a very small space of infinite density, where all the laws of physics are non-functioning. Essentially, it’s the starting place for the Big Bang Theory.
A second singularity occurs when, thrust into reverse gear, we become one with universe as all matter falls into a black hole, taking us along with it into the cosmic compactor. Presumably, “Gravity Rules” T-shirts will be on sale for those who wish a souvenir of the occasion.
On the doom scale, the physics definition is tough to beat, but today’s techies have come close. Singularity’s most recent meaning is the moment in time when artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence. Now that is something to worry about.
Artificial intelligence has now advanced to the point where there are two kinds: hard, and soft. Hard AI attempts to duplicate the functioning of the human brain, while soft AI assists the brain in acquiring and processing information, analysis, and decision-making. And soft AI is already playing a significant part in our lives and our economy.
One reason is that in some situations AI is often better at analysis and decision-making than we are. “Often,” is not “always,” of course, as anyone who has made a phone call to an uncaring large corporation recently can tell you. The soft AI that drives the phone answering and routing logic can also drive customers crazy — but their voices aren’t heard because the phone system won’t let them connect with anybody (if anybody is actually still there).
Where it counts economically, though, businesses install computers to use carefully designed AI to assist human workers, supplement them, and, where possible, replace them. In some cases, where an AI installation has replaced worker teams, a human worker is left behind as an attendant, tasked with tending to the needs of the computers — which are, by the way, notoriously bad tippers.
The two important questions for economists are: what will our economy look like as the AI process develops; and how will it end?
As AI is deployed deeper and deeper in our economy, its effects should show up in chronic unemployment that seems impervious to the best efforts of traditional fiscal and monetary policies. There will also be an increasingly unbalanced distribution of income, leaving insufficient disposable income to absorb the production, and causing a chronically low economic growth that seems unresponsive to traditional economic policy fixes. Whether or not that may also be a limiting factor that ends AI’s growth is not yet clear and needs rigorous economic analysis. It could get worse.
At the individual level, we may find our lives increasingly controlled by AI, not only for things like credit and job applications but also in the workplace and at home. And if you think that working for that clueless manager you’ve got now is difficult, consider what it will be like taking orders from your toaster. AI is not the sole cause of our economic problems, but it is a factor of growing concern. The people worrying about AI and singularity today, though, are mostly sci-fi buffs, techies, writers, and alarmists of varying dispositions. It’s time to recognize the possibility that AI may not be simply another technological change like the ones we have absorbed with such success in the past. It’s time to bring in the professional worriers, the economists, into the picture before it’s too late.
James McCusker is a Bothell economist, educator and consultant. He also writes a column for the monthly Herald Business Journal.
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