In Artificial Intelligence and Life In 2030, the authors assert that the governments should hire AI experts and make policies to mitigate the possible inequalities brought by the deployment of Artificial Intelligence. I agree that it is necessary to share the fruits of AI between people from all kinds of social classes. However, I dont think the proposed approaches in the article are feasible. There are still some obstacles to implementing the policies assuming they are reasonable.
The first big challenge is the shortage of expertise. With the boom of AI-related business, in the industries, there is a growing demand for AI experts. The new graduates from top CS programs are chased by the big tech companies in Silicon Valley and all over the world, not to mention the leading figures in this field. Someone have been worried about the migration of AI researchers from the academia to the industry. They think the academic communications and publications will be hindered by the barriers between different companies. Thus, it is a challenging task for governments to find eligible candidates. Moreover, the government, due to its particularity, is unable to provide the same salaries and treatment as the tech companies offer. For example, the specialists can earn six-figure annul salaries with also stock shares in companies like Google and Uber. In this sense, the governments are not very competitive in attracting the talents. Occasionally, the experts in the government can influence the formulation of the policy, but this is not always the case. For most of the governments with limited budget, an alternative way is to hire some experts as external consultants when needed.
If the governments are very fortunate to find people they want on the job market, new challenge arises. Is there a single policy that work for all the cities in the North America? If not, Who is responsible for the coordination nationally? What if there are more prominent issues on the political agenda? To answer these questions, we can look at those companies that are most heavily invested in Artificial Intelligence. Unsurprisingly, they are all giants in the Information Technology industry. They have enough capital as well as massive data, which is the fuel for the deep learning algorithms. The development of Artificial Intelligence become one of their main strategies since the immense potential of AI in making more profits. There is little chance that they will invest in products that are hard to commercialized. If the potential policies affect their interest, they will spare no effort in political lobbying of stop the policy. On the contrary, the people who suffered the most by Artificial Intelligence in the near future are the cleaners, the truck drivers and the gardeners etc. How can we accommodate these people? Whether the new leaders in AI or the government should pay them compensations? As we can imagine, there will be lots of back and forth in the policy-making process. And These vulnerable groups of people are in no ways the opponents of the IT giants.
