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The IMF said it was “deeply concerned” about massive disruption to the workforce and growing inequality as companies move towards generative artificial intelligence, and called on governments to do more to protect their economies.
In a report published on Monday, the fund said countries should take measures such as improving unemployment insurance and warned that unlike earlier disruptive technologies, artificial intelligence could lead to job losses in higher-skilled professions.
While the IMF said generative AI has huge potential to boost productivity growth and advance public service delivery, it warned it also “raises deep concerns about massive workforce disruption and growing inequality”.
Generative AI, the ability of computers to automatically generate text or images using generative models, came into widespread awareness with the launch of ChatGPT OpenAI in late 2022. While many companies have been slow to adopt it, it has sparked a global revival. technical shares.
Regulation of artificial intelligence has become an issue. The EU has passed a first-of-its-kind AI law that targets the risks posed by rapidly developing technologies, with a possible outright ban on AI applications that pose unacceptable risks to the safety, livelihoods and rights of EU citizens.
The IMF said in its report that education and training policies must adapt to new realities to help prepare workers for the rapidly changing labor market of the future, with a greater focus on lifelong learning. Industry training, apprenticeships and retraining programs could play a bigger role in helping workers transition to new tasks and sectors, the company said.
“We want people to be able to benefit more from the potential that this technology holds, and we want to make sure that opportunities are created for people,” said Era Dabla-Norris, Deputy Director of the IMF’s Fiscal Affairs Department and co-author. news.
She added that “the transition could be painful for workers” who face the prospect of higher and longer unemployment because “older workers may not have the skills needed in the age of artificial intelligence and may take longer to acquire than in the past.” new skills”.
“You want to be able to ease this costly transition and maintain social cohesion in societies,” she said.
The IMF has discouraged special taxes on artificial intelligence, which were proposed as a revenue-raising solution to cover the negative effects of artificial intelligence, arguing that they could hinder productivity growth.
Instead, the IMF proposed raising taxes on capital gains and profits, levies that have fallen in recent decades, as well as corporate taxes to help offset rising wealth inequality.
Earlier waves of automation, such as the adoption of robotics, mostly displaced blue-collar and lower-skilled workers, while higher-skilled workers and white-collar workers are considered the most exposed to AI.
But AI is also capable of powering smarter robots and could also lead to further automation of blue-collar jobs, the IMF warned. This could exacerbate income and wealth inequality.
Generative AI could also lead to further increases in the market power and economic rents enjoyed by dominant firms “in increasingly concentrated winner-take-all markets” as a result of capital becoming more concentrated in the hands of fewer companies.
In January, the IMF estimated that AI would affect nearly 40 percent of jobs worldwide, replacing some and supplementing others. This was in line with a 2023 Goldman Sachs report that estimated AI could replace the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs while creating more and increasing productivity.
The IMF said that given the uncertainty surrounding the future of artificial intelligence, governments should take an “agile” approach that prepares them for “highly disruptive scenarios”.
Given the global reach of artificial intelligence, Dabla-Norris said, “it’s really going to be more important than ever for countries to work together.”