Big Data AI Economic Wave

? ? ? We have stepped into the era of digital economy. To be more accurate, in the next 20 or 30 years, China's economy may be mainly driven by big data artificial intelligence《 AI Economy: work, wealth and social welfare in the age of robotics discusses some important issues of this economic form from the macro to the individual level. This book is written from the perspective of market economist. The author, Roger Butel, was once the chief economist of HSBC. Therefore, from a theoretical perspective, it touches on some important issues concerned by the economic community. For example, AI economy will create new virtual labor force, which will have a certain impact on the existing labor market, and artificial intelligence will become the driving force of innovation, It also suggests that people should pay attention to their own career development and how to adapt to the needs of this era.

Bradford Delong, an American economist, once analyzed the correlation between per capita GDP and population growth rate, and found that before per capita GDP reached 4000 US dollars, population growth and per capita GDP were mutually reinforcing, but beyond this level, the correlation was not significant. This is the law of economic growth in the industrial age. In the era of digital economy, it is the appropriate skills rather than quantity of labor force that will make a real and valuable contribution to the production function. From the perspective of meeting the needs of production, whether the population is reduced is not very important.

People in the age of big data AI should have much more time than now, although no one can make accurate prediction. Franklin once thought that human beings would work four hours a day. Bernard Shaw predicted that by 2000, people would only need to work two hours a day, and Rand's prediction was even more amazing. In the future, only 2% of the population will be able to provide everything society needs. Following the logic principle, it can be expected that due to the large number of intelligent devices involved in production and productivity improvement, the workers who need to participate in production should be those who have mastered the skills related to intelligent production and service, as well as those who can not be replaced by AI. And the human way of working will not be the same as now, working on a site for a long time. People's work may be more fragmented, leisure and entertainment are likely to be mixed into production activities.

Keynes seems to have more foresight on this issue. He pointed out in 1931 that the living standard will be increased by 5-9 times in 100 years. Shortage will no longer be the main problem. People should consider how to use their time. This is related to another vexing problem, that is, people generally feel that time is not enough, and that a lot of information provided by the Internet economy has eroded people's time. While dealing with the affairs of the physical world, everyone has to search and process the information on the Internet in time. In the future, this is the field of big data artificial intelligence, which can rescue human beings from the ocean of information.

People's living standards have been improving. In the process of reducing the total working time, how to distribute more material wealth fairly is a problem that should be considered in the era of digital economy. The government should obtain this part of the surplus first by means of taxation. However, it is not the best plan to distribute it equally. In addition to spending a lot of public facilities, people should also obtain part of the surplus through non productive activities.

From the macro and total point of view, the new technology may not be able to solve the problems that everyone will encounter. In fact, the application of powerful new technology will not be popularized soon, which is a gradual process. Everyone has to pay a certain price, in order to "fast, good and easy" to complete the task. In what aspects will the competition between people be reflected in the future? Material wealth is still important, and the standard of success may not be limited to this. Maybe people can get more and better spiritual enjoyment, which will become people's higher level pursuit. To this end, the individual will still work hard, and being able to do that work itself may be one of the signs of a successful person. With the development of technology, the average working hours of human beings are indeed decreasing. Everyone needs to improve their ability to learn and adapt to protect their labor rights. In people's eyes, different nature of work is still a symbol of social status.

Unemployment caused by new technology has happened in the past. There are always people who can't adapt to the new skill requirements, which leads to technical unemployment and structural unemployment. However, people do not have to worry too much. For a long time, artificial intelligence will not replace all manual work, such as high complexity handicraft production; Because of the cost, artificial intelligence will not soon replace such jobs as housekeeping services. The government should systematically study which industries artificial intelligence may have an impact on, carry out long-term planning for vocational education and re education, and purchase vocational education services by the state, so as to reduce the technical unemployment caused by the application of new technologies.

Another controversial topic of big data AI is the prediction of singularity: whether AI technology can reach the level of human intelligence in 2050. People have enough time to think about it. Even if AI technology can replace human intelligence, I'm afraid people will not want to make it come true. In the visible future, people should plan to cooperate with AI assistants to reduce labor intensity and improve work efficiency.

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