Former Google insider issues a serious warning if AI growth remains unchecked
Those invested in technology would love to see artificial intelligence grow at a rapid pace over the next few years. However, experts believe that such growth, if left unchecked, could have a detrimental effect on the job market and leave thousands without employment. AI has already made several professions obsolete, making a lot of people lose their jobs. Things could get a lot worse in the future, with companies racing towards artificial general intelligence (AGI).
AGI is a technology that matches or exceeds human cognitive abilities. Some industry leaders, like Tesla’s Elon Musk and Anthropic’s Dario Amodei, have predicted that human-level artificial intelligence could arrive as early as this year. This may be great news for tech company CEOs, who will only get richer, but it's not the same for most Americans. According to AI expert Tristan Harris, it could lead to unchecked growth, ultimately deteriorating safety, security, and economic well-being, as per a report in Fortune.
“It’s a kind of competitive logic that self-reinforces itself. It forces everyone to be incentivized to take the most shortcuts, to care the least about safety or security, to not care about how many jobs get disrupted, to not care about the well-being of regular people,” Harris said. What’s worse is that the government is seemingly going backward on protecting American citizens from AI taking over their jobs for less than minimum wage.
The report states that US President Donald Trump has already rolled back Biden-era regulatory measures on AI that protected workers. The President also signed an executive order that prevented several state laws against the technology from going out of hand. Trump believed that such restrictive laws would have put the brakes on innovation. However, without regulations, most Americans are staring at massive layoffs in the coming years.
“The default path is not in [the people’s] interest. The default path is companies racing to release the most powerful, inscrutable, uncontrollable technology we’ve ever invented with the maximum incentive to cut corners on safety,” Harris explained. “If you’re worried about immigration taking jobs, you should be way more worried about AI. It’s like a flood of millions of new digital immigrants that are Nobel Prize–level capability, work at superhuman speed, and will work for less than minimum wage.”
The AI expert even compared the growth of this technology with the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), which several critics, including Trump, believe hurt the American job market. “AI is like another version of NAFTA. It’s like NAFTA 2.0,” he said. “Except instead of China appearing on the world stage, who will do the manufacturing labor for cheap, suddenly this country of geniuses in a data center created by AI appears on the world stage, and it will do all of the cognitive labor in the economy for less than minimum wage.”
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