In an interview published in Fortune, Joseph Stiglitz says he wants you to hold two ideas about artificial intelligence in your head at the same time.
The first: An AI bubble is building; it will likely burst; it will hurt the macroeconomy; and workers will bear the cost of a displacement we have no institutions to manage. The second: Survive that transition and the technology that threatens your job today may end up becoming your most useful coworker.
Stiglitz’s warning is not that AI will destroy the future of work. It is that the transition between now and that future is the most dangerous part, and we are walking into it without a map.
Stiglitz is a Nobel Laureate in economics, a University Professor at Columbia Business School, and a member of the advisory board of Columbia’s Center for Political Economy, part of Columbia World Projects. He co-chairs the High-Level Expert Group on the Measurement of Economic Performance and Social Progress at the OECD, and is the chief economist of the Roosevelt Institute.
