Work and Artificial Intelligence: the future is now
Dunia Astrologer – Scientific Committee of the A. Gramsci Piedmont Institute Foundation
Published on MIT Sloan Management Review – January/February 2023 – Year 2 – Number 1
In our technologically advanced society, advances seem to confer spiritual life on material forces while impoverishing human life by reducing it to a material force. In public places, such as trains and buses, we see people immersed in their electronic devices, completely ignoring the existence of their neighbors. At home, we interact with virtual assistants like Alexa, robot vacuum cleaners and household appliances connected to our smartphones, creating an environment in which objects seem almost animated. In factories, the presence of robots, AGVs and advanced software is increasing, with the number of robots quadrupling globally over the last 30 years, reaching around three million units.
The use of Digital Twins is revolutionizing the control and optimization of physical entities, processes and even human characteristics. These tools improve design, control and maintenance capabilities by creating a virtual counterpart of physical entities. According to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), a Digital Twin is a digital machine or model that mirrors the life of a physical entity, allowing for a one-to-one relationship between the digital and physical twin. This technology is also expanding into logistics, medicine and distribution, enhancing design, control and maintenance capabilities.
Artificial intelligence (AI), powered by vast datasets and sophisticated algorithms, is transforming industries from text generation to image recognition and natural language reproduction. Advanced systems such as Microsoft's VALL-E and OpenAI's ChatGPT-3 demonstrate significant advances in these areas. The growing integration of AI blurs the line between real and virtual, leading to a new existence defined as "onlife", where digital and physical realities merge. AI technology, through deep learning and self-learning, is becoming increasingly capable of processing billions of data from various sensory sources, producing astonishing results in different fields.
The concept of the Metaverse, a virtual world where individuals can live parallel lives, is gaining ground in various industries, from fashion to manufacturing. Companies like General Electric, Tesla and Boeing are exploring the use of Digital Twins in the Metaverse, improving predictive capabilities and spurring innovation. The ability to develop and use digital twins in a 3D environment offers fascinating opportunities, as it enhances predictive capacity regarding possible state changes, stimulates creativity and allows for previously unseen flexibility.
However, there are also risks associated with AI, such as energy consumption, privacy violations, deep fakes and social control. The impact on employment is significant, with AI potentially reducing jobs in some sectors while increasing demand for highly skilled workers. This change could exacerbate social inequalities and alter the nature of work, making it more virtual and less socially engaging. The literature is full of analyzes of AI risks, such as energy consumption, invasion of privacy and excessive social control, which could threaten security and democracy.
To address these challenges, governments, businesses and individuals need to take proactive measures. Governments should invest in digital education, technological research and ethical regulations of AI. Companies must make their organizations more open and compatible with the well-being of workers, enhancing them and developing their professional skills. The objective of technological development should be to redistribute resources and work time, freeing a large part of humanity from necessity and projecting it towards freedom from work. We must prepare for the change that progress introduces into our lives, fighting for a new social model that revalues cooperation for a more balanced and sustainable development of the world.
The real political challenge of the immediate future will be to prevent the world from transforming into an alienating system. Governments must intervene with massive investments in digital training and technological-scientific research, imposing ethical and democratic rules for AI and creating new welfare models. Companies must make their organizations more inclusive and capable of cooperation, increasing their knowledge and potential. Interconnection, virtualization and human-machine interaction must become tools for the humanization of the world of work, not threats. Redistributing resources and working time is essential to free humanity from necessity and project it towards freedom.
Today, the experience of agile working has already produced an estrangement that is difficult to deal with on a psychological level. The need to change organizational models based on the physical 'non-presence' in a common workplace has complicated the assignment of tasks and the solution of new problems, from cybersecurity to the management of space and time. New managerial challenges are emerging, and others, of a social and ethical nature, will emerge if work becomes predominantly virtual. This scenario could lead to an extreme polarization between well-paid super-specialists and a mass of precarious neo-proletarians, controlled by intelligent platforms designed by the former.
The very concept of productive organization will change radically, and inequalities will become even more striking. Human work will lose its social centrality, and there will be an even more accentuated polarization. On the one hand, the globally connected super-specialists; on the other, a mass of devalued and precarious workers. In the middle, those who do not belong to any group, supported by a welfare system.
In this context, preventing the world from transforming into an alienating info-system is the real political challenge. Governments must invest in digital education and technological research, imposing ethical rules for AI and creating a robust social safety net. Companies must become more inclusive and cooperative, improving the well-being of workers. Interconnection and virtualization must be seen as opportunities for the humanization of work.
Finally, technological development should aim to redistribute resources and work time, freeing humanity from necessity and projecting it towards freedom. We must prepare for change and fight for a new social model that no longer sees divisions between productive work and non-work, reevaluating cooperation for a balanced and sustainable development of the world.