From
George Castro
International analyst
Goldman Sachs points out (“The Potential Effects of Artificial Intelligence (AI) on Economic Growth” / Briggs-Kodnani) that Artificial Intelligence (AI), transformed into synonymous with automation and lower labor costsit has unleashed an extraordinary productivity boom, higher than at any other time in the history of capitalism in its industrial revolution phase, implying an increase of more than 7 points per year in global gross product for the next 10 years.
This AI-enabled productivity boom is an integral part of what has been called the Fourth Industrial Revolution (CRI). the forced digitization of production and services, and which is developed using three fundamental technologies, which are AI, Internet of Things (IoT) and robotization; and that it would have culminated in the advanced world, including China, in 2030, or sooner.
What characterizes AI is this generates a product indistinguishable from the most advanced creations of the human mind, and which – associated with the Internet of Things (IoT) – breaks down all current and virtual barriers between machines and human beings. It is the most formidable process of breaking the status quo anywhere and at the same time experienced so far in human history.
The consequences are as follows: More than two-thirds of current jobs in the US and Europe will be automated in the next 10 years.
It should be added to avoid any hasty catastrophic vision that the displacement of workers that would cause the approaching wave of automation driven by AI would be overtaken by a quantitatively and qualitatively superior process of creating new jobswith the particularity that the new jobs will necessarily require a very high level of qualification, and that for this very reason they will offer wages two and three times higher.
Three quarters of the world’s gross product, which amounts to 100 trillion dollars in 2023, correspond to traditional industries (manufacturing, transport, logistics and healthcare); and they are these industries are experiencing a profound and irreversible transformation with the complete digitization of all its production systems, which is exercised by the CRI, which is the most profound and widespread in the history of capitalism.
What is extraordinary is that now this digitization process, especially in production, is ongoing multiplied by 100 or 200 thanks to metal 3D printing technologywhich occurs or may occur in all parts of the world, without any geographical limitation, and this involves a systematic and brutal reduction of production costs.
As a result, the trend is that large transnational companies tend to do all of their production through specialized third-party firms, while concentrating on research and development (R&D), sales and marketing.
The result is a phenomenal acceleration of the international division of labourwhich means that the productivity boom that is announced necessarily has a global dimension.
Certainly this extraordinary productivity boom that is coming is intensely disruptive in nature, and it amounts to a new kind of social revolution in which education overtakes capital as the primary driver of economic growth. Schumpeter had already warned: “capitalism is a process of permanent revolution”.
In the United States, the world’s largest economy, this could imply a productivity jump of 1.5 points a year over the next decade; and from then on – starting around 2035 – it would come into force a new historical phase of the capitalist system, qualitatively different from all the others of the past. Leon Trotsky had already warned: “the real separation between the modern world and the Middle Ages will take place in the United States”.
Naturally, as was entirely to be expected, the large-scale emergence of IRC and AI, its main technology, has unleashed a real panic full of fear and uncertainty, which has turned into utopian attempts such as trying to establish a break in productivity. boom triggered by AI.
This is somewhat similar to what happened with the unfolding of the “Prometheus Unleashed” of the first and second industrial revolutions, when attempts at utopian socialism based on the premise of the need to distance ourselves from the modern world proliferated.
What’s happening is a time of extraordinary uncertainty caused by a crisis of the status quo everywhere and at the same time. It is the noise that causes the collapse of the workshops of the past, but certainly not the end of the world, on the contrary.
In this picture of grim and brutal uncertainty there is one certain fact that determines all the others; and it is that the productivity boom that is approaching is the exact opposite of a phase of decay and darkness.
In short, in short, it is a formidable privilegeunique, who lives in this historical phase.
Source: Clarin
