Summary: Gita Gopinath, First Deputy Managing Director of the IMF, believes innovations like ChatGPT may boost productivity and economic output but also pose "significant" risks. She urges nations to quickly draft regulations to control these, so as not to repeat the failed response to job losses from manufacturing automation.
The IMF's second-in-command recently warned that generative artificial intelligence (AI) poses a risk of "severe disruption" to human employment and called on governments worldwide to quickly draft regulations to control this emerging technology.
Gita Gopinath, the former chief economist at the IMF and now its first deputy managing director, stated in a recent media interview that AI innovations based on large language models like ChatGPT could potentially enhance productivity and economic output, but they also pose "significant" risks.
Gopinath pointed out that while the uncertainty surrounding AI innovations is high, that doesn't mean we have the luxury of time to wait. Governments, institutions, and decision-makers must act quickly on all fronts, not only in terms of regulation but also in preparing for the potentially severe disruption they could cause to the labor market.
Gopinath used the automation of manufacturing in recent decades as a cautionary example.
She explained that economists had misjudged the situation in the past, assuming that large numbers of auto production line workers laid off due to automation would find better employment opportunities in other industries. The strong backlash against globalization following the financial crisis was due to governments' failure to help those displaced by automation find work commensurate with their productivity.
To avoid a recurrence of such failure, Gopinath suggested that governments need to strengthen the social safety net provided to affected workers, while also formulating tax policies that do not incentivize companies to replace employees with machines.
Wall Street Journal had mentioned that at the end of last month, 350 AI leaders signed a joint open letter warning that AI could be akin to a "pandemic or nuclear war" and potentially lead to human extinction. Signatories included Sam Altman, founder and CEO of OpenAI which developed ChatGPT, CEO of Google DeepMind Demis Hassabis, CEO of Anthropic Dario Amode, as well as Turing Award winners and recognized "fathers of AI" Geoffrey Hinton and Yoshua Bengio.
The Biden administration has stated in recent months that AI poses threats to public safety, privacy, and democracy, but the government's power to regulate it is limited. Microsoft founder Bill Gates has expressed his belief that AI should be properly regulated, and while he is excited about this technology, he did not sign the aforementioned joint letter.
