Is AI also short for accelerating inequality?

Todd A. Knoop

Chapter 8 in Understanding Economic Inequality, 2025, pp 233-254 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to revolutionize our economy—and the gap between the haves and have-nots—in ways that are hard for us to currently fathom. This chapter examines the economics of AI, in which AI mimics human intelligence through improving prediction, not judgment. It also explains how AI is different from past general-purpose technologies such as information technology. This chapter examines the dystopian arguments that AI portends a ”Turing Trap” and a future “world without work” for the vast majority of people. However, it also examines utopian arguments that AI will make every worker radically more productive, particularly the least productive workers, leading to an era characterized by general prosperity as well as increased equality. This chapter ends with the argument that the future impact of AI is unpredictable, but not uncontrollable. There are things that can be done to make sure that AI is safe, and that the benefits of AI are shared more equally than past technological revolutions.

Keywords: Artificial Intelligence (AI); General purpose technologies; Prediction vs judgement; Automation vs augmentation; Turing trap (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781035360116
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