It’s Not the Tech, It’s How You Use It
New digital technologies, including AI, are galvanizing the world, and debate between two contending camps is heated: Boomers optimistic about their contribution to human progress, and Doomers concerned that they are bringing a dystopian world. This book provides timely insights in this great historical moment of technological disruption and transformation.
Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, looking back across a thousand years, argue that it really depends on human effort to make technological changes contribute to progress through inclusive, redistributive efforts to share the benefits. Our current problems are rooted in the huge economic, political and social power of corporations, especially in the technology sector, which undercuts shared prosperity as it limits the sharing of gains from technological change. The most pernicious impact is through technology’s direction, which is excessively toward automation, surveillance, data collection and advertising.
To regain shared prosperity, the authors contend that we must promote development of technologies that complement and help human capabilities. They find in history the three prongs of a critical formula necessary: alter the narrative and change norms; cultivate countervailing powers; and find policy solutions that progressives have articulated based on the new narrative, research and expertise. The authors contend that the direction of technology, its inequality implications, and the extent to which productivity gains are shared between capital and labor, are not inescapable givens but societal choices.