From the late 19th century, electricity transformed industrial production and every aspect of people’s lives. Think about the impact of electricity, which runs continually in the background of our lives. And if you want a glimpse of how much damage can be wrought by reckless innovation, look at social media.ĪI could be bigger than the sum of these elements - precisely because it is the culmination of more than four decades of innovation. The internet was supposed to let information run free but resulted in the creation of some very powerful companies that are now using our data - without proper permissions - to train their algorithms. The digital transformation boosted productivity, but not by as much as expected and the benefits were not widely shared. In our lifetimes, the increasing use of computers has contributed significantly to the loss of well-paid blue- and white-collar jobs, a hollowing out of the middle class in many parts of the U.S., and the widening of income inequality. The idea that automation necessarily creates shared prosperity is an illusion - that’s not what happened in medieval Europe, or in the first century of the Industrial Revolution, or in the digital transformation we have experienced since 1980. We have been grappling with the consequences of machines replacing people for nearly 1,000 years. The really pressing problem is among low-wage workers whom new technology - for example, at Amazon - already puts under greater surveillance and squeezes to work harder, in more difficult conditions. More educated and better resourced workers - think of many on Wall Street - will probably figure some of this out for themselves.

But this needs to be combined with an explicit recognition that any resulting productivity gains must be shared with workers, in terms of higher incomes and better working conditions. We need, instead, a pivot on the part of inventors, entrepreneurs and policymakers toward a focus on “machine usefulness,” the idea that computers should primarily enhance human capabilities.

Company Town Automated writing? Not so fast, says the Writers Guild of AmericaĪs AI is becoming more ubiquitous, the Writers Guild is proposing some guidelines for how to regulate it and avoid writers being cut out of the creation of TV and film.

Automating inequality