Artificial
Intelligence (AI) is no longer simply a rapidly advancing technology. It has
become one of the world’s major arenas of economic and political competition,
reshaping the global balance and distribution of power.
اضافة اعلان
Hundreds of billions of
dollars are flowing into semiconductors, data centers, energy, computing
infrastructure, and advanced AI models, in a race led primarily by the United
States and China, and to a lesser extent Western Europe.
But
behind these enormous investments lies a more important question: Who will reap
the returns and wealth generated by them?
Early
indicators offer little reassurance. Rather than automatically leading to a
broader distribution of wealth and opportunity, there are serious reasons to
believe that this transformation could deepen the economic and technological
divide between wealthy countries and those commonly referred to as the Global
South.
At the same time, it could widen inequalities within
advanced economies themselves, separating giant corporations from large
segments of workers and society.
The
core capabilities underpinning artificial intelligence from advanced chips and
data centers to cloud computing, data, and massive pools of capital are heavily
concentrated in a limited number of countries and corporations.
This means that
a significant share of the expected gains in productivity and income may accrue
to the owners of capital, technology, and intellectual property, rather than
necessarily benefiting workers or the societies that use these technologies.
There
is also widespread optimism that artificial intelligence will create more jobs
than it eliminates.
But this assumption deserves much greater caution and
scrutiny. It is based partly on past historical experience, when industrial and
technological revolutions eventually generated new sectors and occupations.
History,
however, does not repeat itself automatically. The positive social outcomes
associated with earlier technological transformations were not produced by
technology alone.
They were also the result of particular social and political
balances, strong trade unions, labour legislation, social protection systems,
broad access to quality public education, and tax policies that distributed
part of the gains from economic growth.Many of these conditions are weaker today than they
were during earlier periods of technological transformation.
The
argument that workers displaced by artificial intelligence will easily move
into new jobs also assumes high levels of education and digital skills, along
with fair and universal access to continuous training.
These conditions are
simply not available to hundreds of millions of workers, particularly in
countries already struggling with weak education systems, high unemployment,
large informal economies and labour markets, and limited social protection.
Artificial
intelligence will certainly create new jobs. Yet many of them may be less
secure and more dependent on temporary contracts, platform-based work, digital
surveillance, and intensified productivity pressures, unless labour laws and
social protection systems evolve as rapidly as technology itself.
We
are witnessing a historic transformation in the means of production and in
labour relations.
It should not be approached with pessimism, but there is
equally little justification for excessive optimism about its social returns. Artificial
intelligence has the potential to generate enormous increases in global wealth,
but it has no built-in mechanism for distributing that wealth fairly.
Without
national and international policies that restore a better balance between
capital and labour, and between powerful economies and those with fewer
resources and capabilities, we may discover in the years ahead that we are
living through one of the greatest revolutions in production in history and, at
the same time, one of the largest waves of wealth concentration and social
inequality.
