Big Money Defends AI, But Not For You

Making AI responsible is costly.

AI won’t replace all jobs.

Companies should consider laying off more to profit more.

Those are only some of the takeaways from a report called “The Economic Potential of Generative AI” by McKinsey & Company.

Yes, the same management consulting firm that was involved in many high-profile scandals like Epson and the 2008 financial crisis. So basically, it’s your average shady research institution that publishes position papers that benefit solely the big businesses, like oil, and bad governments, for the pursuit of profit.

The report has an educational value, of course. But exclusively for investors and business people, especially those in the US, Canada, and the UK. Because, at most, the authors refer to other companies as “ChatGPT and its competitors” or “one European bank” when summarizing the development history of this technology and mentioning possible applications in various industries.

Another important issue the report forgets to mention is the threat from unethical digital activity tracking powered by AI, often used for the purposes of behavioral advertisement. Instead, only copyright violations and ‘branding recognition risks infringing on intellectual property rights’ are cited as points to consider in the applications of generative AI in the marketing sector.

And here’s an excerpt from the report: “In addition, this analysis does not assume that the scale of work automation equates directly to job losses. Like other technologies, generative AI typically enables individual activities within occupations to be automated, not entire occupations. Historically, the activities in many occupations have shifted over time as certain activities are automated. However, organizations may decide to realize the benefits of increased productivity by reducing employment in some job categories, a possibility we cannot rule out.”

Oh, but the report doesn’t always advocate full automation, too: “For lower-wage occupations, making a case for work automation is more difficult because the potential benefits of automation compete against a lower cost of human labor.” Meticulous, isn’t it?

Throughout the report, the authors seem to handle the matters from a profit-making point of view. Another excerpt: “Further, there’s a significant move- spearheaded by the open-source community and spreading to the leaders of generative AI companies themselves- to make AI more responsible, which could increase its costs.”

Any improvement or application will inevitably increase this cost in current conditions, and if the integration of generative AI into the banking system is welcomed, for instance, the same should be done when it comes to regulations, or is it naive to think that?

What is troubling is that the report has been used as an educational material in at least one case: Fractal Analytics’ course on Generative AI on Coursera.

Telling people only small parts of the story and hiding crucial facts that could affect some bottom lines isn’t something you would want to see done in a lesson on AI. Those who have the biggest share on the market shouldn’t decide what people can know about AI, and what they can’t.