December 26, 2012

Artificial Intelligence is the Key to Future Growth — Or Stagnation

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A few days ago Tyler Cowen pointed me to an op-ed by Robert Gordon suggesting that future economic growth will be fairly sluggish. Gordon points out, correctly, that the strong growth of the 20th century was based on two key inventions, electrification and the internal combustion engine, and the thousands of innovations that followed on from those. The computer revolution of the late 20th century just hasn’t produced as much innovation, and thus hasn’t powered as much growth.

Fair enough, as far as it goes. But what about the future? Here’s the nutshell version of Gordon’s op-ed:

The first response from skeptics always involves health care….[But] pharmaceutical research appears to be entering a phase of diminishing returns….The fracking revolution and soaring oil and gas production have also excited optimists. But this isn’t a source of future economic growth….Another claim by the growth optimists is that 3-D printing and micro-robots will revolutionize manufacturing….Can economic growth be saved by Google’s driverless car? This is bizarre ground for optimism, but it is promoted not just by Google’s Eric Schmidt but by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Erik Brynjolfsson.

This is very strange. Gordon may be right about all these things, but he rather conspicuously left out the most important future innovation of all: artificial intelligence. You simply can’t write about the future of innovation without talking about that. At the very least, you need to acknowledge it, and then explain why you think it will never happen, or why it won’t produce a lot of future growth even if it does. But you can’t just ignore it and then say there are no grounds for being optimistic about future growth. It would be like writing about the future of sports in 1960 and not bothering to address the possibility that television might have an impact on things.

There are lots of things that might change the future in big ways. Genome sequencing might eventually revolutionize healthcare. Cheap fusion power might revolutionize the energy industry. But as big as those things might be if they come to pass, there’s only one near-future invention that has the potential to rival electrification as a source of innovation: artificial intelligence. If you talk about the future without talking about artificial intelligence, you’re simply not taking the topic seriously. Gordon does us all a disservice by pretending that it doesn’t exist.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

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