For the first time since the 1960s, Hollywood writers and actors are on strike concurrently. One of the joint movement’s inspirations is generative artificial intelligence—the term for programs that produce humanlike text, images, audio and video more quickly and cheaply than artists. The strikers fear studios’ use of generative AI tools will replace or devalue human labor. This is a reasonable worry: one report suggests that thousands of jobs have already been lost to AI, while another estimates that hundreds of millions could eventually be automated. Left unchecked, this labor disruption could further concentrate wealth in the hands of companies and leave workers with less power than ever.
“Unfettered capitalism, unfettered innovation, does not lead to the general well-being of our society,” says Joseph E. Stiglitz, a winner of the 2001 Nobel prize in economics, a professor at Columbia University and chief economist at the Roosevelt Institute, a think tank based in New York City. “That’s one of the results that I’ve shown very strongly. So one can’t just leave it to the market.” Striking workers such as those in the writers’ and actors’ unions that are taking action now could serve as one restriction on job automation. Government regulation could also limit AI’s disruptive ability. Stiglitz, who has studied the science of inequality—and how we can reduce it—spoke with Scientific American about how artificial intelligence will impact the U.S. economy and what should be done to prevent it from increasing economic inequality.
[An edited transcript of the interview follows.]
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