Artificial intelligence is rapidly changing our society and economy. A new study shows that the majority of people believe that artificial intelligence is displacing more human labour than it is creating new opportunities. Scientists at the University of Vienna and Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) demonstrated a causal link: the stronger this perception, the more dissatisfied people are with democracy – and the less they participate in political debates about future technological developments. These effects occur even though artificial intelligence has had only a limited impact on the labour market so far. The study was recently published in the renowned journal PNAS.
This is a spurious correlation if I’ve ever seen one.
Perceiving the government as loudly and publicly placing anything ahead of regular people and their jobs is what erodes democracy. The feeling that someone is not represented to elected representatives. Most elections over the last 30 years have been about this as a core economic element. Globalzied manufacturing was the Big Bad for decades before AI came along.