AI and jobs A new EU Agenda Andrea Renda

Three quotes “The crisis takes a much longer time coming than you think, and then it happens much faster than you would have thought” “A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention” Dornbusch, "Expectations and exchange rate dynamics." The journal of political economy (1976): 1161-1176. p. 1161 “At the end of the century the use of words and general educated opinion will have altered so much that one will be able to speak of machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted”

Digital Technology as “enabler” Competition Collusion Access Discrimination Digital Technology as “enabler” Jobs Unemployment Enforcement Infringement

Source: Winick (2018)

This time it’s different Speed is different: humans won’t keep the pace of innovation: Some jobs will be lost, ALL jobs will be affected Trade and protectionism will be relied upon to mitigate some of these effects Short term: major disruptions Long term: we work less and differently, with better subjective well-being Policy priorities Work-train-life balance Reforming education and skills Redesigning the welfare system and the role and mission of trade unions Redefining work?

The diffusion challenge: six growing divides Between innovation-leading and lagging countries Between cities and rural areas Between leading firms and “zombie” firms Between rich and poor Between education “haves” and “have-nots” Between “gifted” and “non-gifted”?

Data as labour? New forms of remuneration Universal Basic Income incompatible with subjective well-being “Heteromation” (Ekbia and Nardi 2017) Communicative labour (social media, e.g. LinkedIN, Facebook) Cognitive labour (e.g. upwork, mechanical turk) Creative labour (modders) Emotional labour (e.g. PARO) Crowdsourced labour (citizen science)

Data as labour? Unlikely to work, at least for communicative labour Scenario 1: all data are valued in the same way Cross-subsididation, over-production of data “Market for lemons”: social networks would be flooded with bad-quality data Scenario 2: data are valued differently Risk of escalating inequality, undermining social cohesion, and ultimately fragmenting the user base of existing digital platforms Possible for other forms of work (cognitive, creative, emotional, crowdsourced)

Complementarity: Citizen/CEOs? AI that helps us navigate the information-rich environment Open source AI that “selects content for us” AI solutions that enhance human capabilities

The EESC @60: future missions Redefining work Redefining welfare Defining human-AI complementarity Refocusing on SDGs and well-being Shaping multi-level government strategies Keeping track of co-regulatory schemes

AI and jobs A new EU agenda Andrea Renda