Artificial intelligence may take jobs from humans and widen the wealth gap, social welfare benefits may be lifted up but the class boundaries become harder

Artificial intelligence has been under the spotlight of today's World Economic Forum in Davos, the heads of many technology companies are anxious to show the world their responsibility and sympathy as they fear that their companies' inventions will be blamed and criticized by the public once their machines are starting to replace labors' jobs. Moreover, they also agree on setting out principles for artificial intelligence. However, I still think that artificial intelligence will eventually take over many of our jobs in the future and the criticism will be unavoidable.

The meaning of the invention of AlphaGo is not that machines can beat humans in a brain game, instead it means a lot more. AlphaGo can learn from repeated matches, this means artificial intelligence can learn from experience; therefore, labors cannot no longer use their ability of learning from experience to gain more productivity as a comparative advantage to artificial intelligence. Moreover, once artificial intelligence can learn from experience, it could lower the frequency of necessary updates of artificial intelligence, so the cost of investing in artificial intelligence as a factor of production can be reduced sharply. If the cost of hiring artificial intelligence is significantly lower than hiring human labors, companies will definitely prefer hiring artificial intelligence. Is such case impossible in the future? I think the answer is quite the opposite that the cost of hiring artificial intelligence in large scale companies is extremely likely to be lower than the cost of hiring human labors. Once artificial intelligence is starting to replace human labors, the society will definitely start to blame these technology companies. Governments cannot enforce companies to stop such process, as they may force the companies out of their countries and lose tax incomes. Therefore, in order to regain the social stability, governments need to increase welfare benefits for the whole population.

There are some skills that artificial intelligence has not had yet and I cannot be certain that artificial intelligence will not gain these skills in the future. One is innovation and invention. Artificial intelligence cannot develop in something irrelevant from its originally designing purpose. Another is aesthetic and designing. Although in an art museum in Dublin, machines are used in drawing, designed by Patrick Tresset. However, it can only accord its designer’s aesthetic; as the fashion is changing all the time, artificial intelligence cannot always design work that matches the fashion. There are other skills that the current artificial intelligence does not have.

In general, in the future I expect that artificial intelligence and machines will further take many jobs away from humans and this could cause an instability and a wider wealth gap in the society that force the government lift up the welfare benefits.