I am of course going to comment on Sam Altman and his tin-eared comment on the likelihood that AI will have negative effects, such as, for example, eating all our jobs or destroying humanity: “we believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency.”
This week in my Micro class we are talking about externalities, which is exactly what Sam Altman does not know he is talking about. AI has lots of those, both positive and negative. It is surely too early to come up with a definitive list; however, someone should ask Sam if he is in principle ready to accept the principle that OpenAI should agree to pay to mitigate the negative effects of the creation and use of AI -- doing so would give him and all the other CEOs incentives to put guardrails in place.
This reminds me of globalization -- a reorientation of world trade patterns that released tremendous benefits for global economic growth, but had severe negative repercussions for many workers who lost jobs. If the principle of paying for negative externalities had been incorporated into this process from the beginning by, for example, retraining workers for new jobs in growing industries, a lot of workers would have been grateful instead of furious in the face of change, which would have saved us a ton of trouble.
And many other examples. Fossil fuel companies. Chemical companies. Etc.
I am of course going to comment on Sam Altman and his tin-eared comment on the likelihood that AI will have negative effects, such as, for example, eating all our jobs or destroying humanity: “we believe that the world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology and people having the agency.”
This week in my Micro class we are talking about externalities, which is exactly what Sam Altman does not know he is talking about. AI has lots of those, both positive and negative. It is surely too early to come up with a definitive list; however, someone should ask Sam if he is in principle ready to accept the principle that OpenAI should agree to pay to mitigate the negative effects of the creation and use of AI -- doing so would give him and all the other CEOs incentives to put guardrails in place.
This reminds me of globalization -- a reorientation of world trade patterns that released tremendous benefits for global economic growth, but had severe negative repercussions for many workers who lost jobs. If the principle of paying for negative externalities had been incorporated into this process from the beginning by, for example, retraining workers for new jobs in growing industries, a lot of workers would have been grateful instead of furious in the face of change, which would have saved us a ton of trouble.
And many other examples. Fossil fuel companies. Chemical companies. Etc.