What is machine usefulness?
A working definition from MIT Sloan
machine usefulness (noun)
The idea that artificial intelligence should primarily enhance human capabilities rather than replace them.
Current efforts to develop powerful artificial intelligence are mostly based around “machine intelligence” — the idea that machines can think like humans and even outperform them. According to MIT economists and Nobel laureates Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, this framing, combined with a focus on maximizing shareholder wealth, could tip the balance of power toward management, disrupting the workforce and creating greater inequity.
Acemoglu and Johnson argue for a more human-focused version of AI. Shifting the focus from “machine intelligence” to “machine usefulness” would elevate the idea that computers should primarily enhance human capabilities. This would be “a much more fruitful direction for increasing productivity,” Acemoglu and Johnson wrote in a 2023 opinion piece in The New York Times. “By empowering workers and reinforcing human decision making in the production process, it also would strengthen social forces that can stand up to big tech companies.”
Steps toward reframing the relationship between humans and artificial intelligence include asserting individual ownership rights over the data used to build AI systems, pushing back against surveillance capitalism, and establishing a graduated system for corporate taxes, the authors write.
Working Definitions: Artificial Intelligence
MIT Sloan's Working Definitions explore the words and phrases behind emerging management ideas.
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