Artificial intelligence has the potential to completely change the way Americans – especially our young people – research, communicate, learn, create and much more.
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New technologies inevitably spark a conversation about lose some jobs thanks to progress, but time and time again we have seen America, with its people en masse, benefit in the long term from technological advances.
Artificial intelligence is the final scary topic.
There are all kinds of well-intentioned concerns related to the adoption of artificial intelligence. Topics like how AI could reshape society, human relationships, and the rest of the American social landscape are topics that concern me.
However, some oppose technological progress simply for the sake of opposing it. Some of our elected officials have even launched the idea that the government should regulate industries to prevent technological progress from eliminating jobs. You hear this argument when it comes to autonomous vehicles And artificial intelligence all the time.
Technological progress must be welcomed. Such radical social changes require a healthy dose of skepticism, but preventing their adoption in the interest of preserving the status quo of the labor market is short-sighted and detrimental to growth.
Radical acceptance of new technologies justifies skepticism
Large-scale new technologies have the potential to change our society and culture in ways that are difficult to initially predict. It is for this reason that a cautious approach is required when it comes to their adoption.
Take, for example, the advent and rise of social media. It is clear at this point that its effects on children have been generally horribleand this could have been avoided if we had taken a more cautious approach to age restriction laws from the start. It is it’s happening nowbut it’s hard to put that genie back in the bottle, given that the bottle is set somewhere in the 2010s.
Artificial intelligence has the potential to completely change the way Americans – especially our young people – research, communicate, learn, create and much more.
To this extent, I understand the apprehension about the rapid adoption of new technologies. Balancing technological progress with preventing revolutionary errors is a worthy pursuit. However, there are far fewer compelling arguments against progress.
Concerns about AI are good, but we must embrace progress
The arguments for moderate acceptance are very good. In fact, I share some of the aforementioned positions. However, the argument I am not sympathetic to is that we need to stop progress because it could make some jobs obsolete.
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Missouri, has been a leading voice in pursuing these policiesstating that “only humans should drive cars and trucks.”
Such regulations would essentially neutralize the economic benefits of technological progress by requiring that autonomous vehicles always have a human supervisor in the cabin. Unions have applied such measures, without much success so far. Still, the fact that members of Congress are imposing such restrictions is worrying.
The government would have been unwise to ban automobiles to protect carriage drivers, stable masters and other buggy-related employees, for example. Automobiles made all of these jobs obsolete, but over time they created new ones, improved productivity in other sectors, and improved the lives of Americans.
Of course, those whose jobs became obsolete found themselves worse off in the short term, and in some cases perhaps in the long term. However, in hindsight, it is abundantly clear that the advent of the car was better for America than regulating it out of existence.
For the example of vehicles, AI technology has the potential to prevent millions of accidents per year and save thousands of lives. From the approximately 2 million vehicle accidents per yearhuman error is responsible for most of them.
Whether such technology can make a significant dent in the sector 40,000 lives lost road accidents each year, we should not obstruct its adoption in the name of preserving certain jobs. This doesn’t even take into account the additional net savings of up to 340 billion dollars caused each year by road accidents.
Such arguments are obviously ridiculous if we change the industry to that of medicine. The government does not have to ban medical advances that render some specialized doctors obsolete, because it is clear that the benefit of improved lives is more important than the right to continue doing the same job.
Although less obvious in the case of autonomous vehicles and artificial intelligence, both have the capacity to save lives on an impressive scale and should not be stopped from doing so.
The government should instead let technological progress take its course and – if it gets involved – help those whose jobs have been eliminated adapt to the new reality. Protectionism, which consists of favoring these jobs at the expense of the progress of revolutionary technology, is not the right answer.
Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a political science graduate from DePaul University.