Should our future be decided by the CEOs of Big Tech? For Nobel laureate in economics Simon Johnson, giving too much power to a handful of billionaires would come at the expense of the public interest.
The British-American economist who teaches at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology also stressed that the development of artificial intelligence should benefit less qualified workers.
Automation and its impact on jobs is one of Johnson’s favorite elements in the relationship between democracy and economic prosperity, a topic that earned him the Nobel Prize alongside the Turkish-American economist Darun Acemoglu and the British-American James Robinson.
Agence France-Presse spoke with Johnson by phone and the interview was edited for a long time.
Question: Your work examines the relationship between democratic institutions and economic progress, but in Western countries many turn to populist movements because they feel they are missing out on growth. How do you explain this?
I was actually in France during your last election… I’m not an expert on France, but from those conversations and my direct observation it seems to me that even in the more prosperous parts of France… people are disappointed, they’re frustrated, they feel that democracy has not been achieved. ..
So this failure to deliver results for people is a problem, and yes, of course we have to address it, and we have to address it by creating more good jobs, and that is the basic foundation of everything. A job where your productivity is higher, your salary is higher, and your working and living conditions are better than they were in the past, or better than they were for your parents…and if any system makes reasonable promises on such matters and fails to deliver, yes, I think you should expect some Disappointment and some negative feedback.
Will AI raise the productivity and wages of low-skilled workers, or will it become a means of, what we call hyper-automation, where you basically kick workers out of your grocery store, and replace them with self-checkout kiosks?
Q: Who benefits from AI in this case? Better educated workers?
Let’s be completely honest… AI is mostly useful to big tech companies. At any moment like this, the people who envision the technology, the vision that shapes the technology are absolutely crucial. These people, of course, are currently considered heroes. But I think we have to ask, should we put this much power in the hands of one, two, three, or a few men?
Don’t let the big tech experts control what is developed, how it is used, and how it impacts jobs… you will get their vision of the future. And their money, not yours, your people’s, or your society’s.
Q: Is there a need for more regulation of big tech companies?
The business model of Meta (Facebook, Instagram), Alphabet (Google), and a few others is driven by digital advertising. The way digital advertising works is that it grabs your attention, makes you upset, and manipulates your emotions. This is bad for mental health, and it’s very bad for children, by the way, and it’s terrible for democracy, because what they want to do is make you angry and angry at other people and yell at them and behave in a way that… everyone is not going to behave personally. So we must realize that digital advertising is like tobacco and fast food.
I’m not suggesting it should be banned, nor do I think it would work, but it should be taxed heavily. Anyway, our proposal (with Darun Acemoglu) is to impose a very high tax on digital advertising, and that would generate about $200 billion in additional revenue for the United States, which is a significant amount of money… We propose that, you know, Congress could Allocate some of these tax dollars to support mental health, including children’s mental health.
In any case, getting these companies to change their business model and rely less on digital advertising will be beneficial to many, on many fronts, but including the democracy front… We have to calm down, we have to depolarize, we have to get back to finding ground. Shared.
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