Could AI Drive Transformative Social Progress? What Would This Require?

Abstract

The potential societal impacts of artificial intelligence (AI) and related technologiesare so vast, they are often likened to those of past transformative technologicalchanges such as the industrial or agricultural revolutions. They are also deeplyuncertain, presenting a wide range of possibilities for good or ill – as indeed thediverse technologies lumped under the term AI are themselves diffuse, labile, anduncertain. Speculation about AI's broad social impacts ranges from full-on utopia todystopia, both in fictional and non-fiction accounts. Narrowing the field of view fromaggregate impacts to particular impacts and their mechanisms, there is substantial(but far from total) agreement on some – e.g., profound disruption of labor markets,with the prospect of unemployment that is novel in scale and breadth – but greatuncertainty on others, even as to sign. Will AI concentrate or distribute economicand political power – and if concentrate, then in whom? Will it make human lives andsocieties more diverse or more uniform? Expand or contract individual liberty?Enrich or degrade human capabilities? On all these points, the range of presentspeculation is vast.