The advent of A.I. — artificial intelligence — is spurring curiosity and fear. Will A.I. be a creator or a destroyer of worlds? In “Can We Have Pro-Worker A.I.? Choosing a Path of Machines in Service of Minds,” three economists at M.I.T., Daron Acemoglu, David Autor and Simon Johnson, looked at this epochal innovation last year: The private sector in the United States is currently pursuing a path for generative A.I. that emphasizes automation and the displacement of labor, along with intrusive workplace surveillance. As a result, disruptions could lead to a potential downward cascade in wage levels, as well as inefficient productivity gains. Before the advent of artificial intelligence, automation was largely limited to blue-collar and office jobs using digital technologies while more complex and better-paying jobs were left untouched because they require flexibility, judgment and common sense. Now, Acemoglu, Autor and Johnson wrote, A.I. presents a direct threat to those high-skill jobs: “A major focus of A.I. research is to attain human parity in a vast range of cognitive tasks and, more generally, to achieve ‘artificial general intelligence’ that fully mimics and then surpasses capabilities of the human mind.” The three economists make the case that There is no guarantee that the transformative capabilities of generative A.I. will be used for the betterment of work or workers. The bias of the tax code, of the private sector generally, and of the technology sector specifically, leans toward automation over augmentation.

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