(Sourced from OECD ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE PAPERS November 2024 No. 27)
AI BENEFITS
- Accelerated scientific progress:
- AI can significantly enhance scientific research, leading to breakthroughs in areas like drug discovery and climate modeling (OECD, 2023).
- Better economic growth, productivity gains, and living standards:
- AI adoption can boost productivity and economic growth, creating new job opportunities and improving living standards (OECD, 2024).
- Reduced inequality and poverty:
- AI can help reduce inequality and poverty by improving access to education, healthcare, and financial services, especially in underserved communities (OECD, 2023).
- Better approaches to urgent and complex issues, including mitigating climate change and advancing other SDGs:
- AI can address complex global challenges, such as climate change, by providing advanced data analysis and predictive capabilities (OECD, 2022).
- Better decision-making, sense-making, and forecasting:
- AI tools can enhance decision-making processes by providing data-driven insights and improving forecasting accuracy (OECD, 2023).
- Improved information production and distribution:
- AI systems can facilitate new forms of data collection and sharing, improving the quality and accessibility of information (OECD, 2023).
- Better healthcare and education services:
- AI can offer personalized healthcare and education services, improving outcomes and accessibility for individuals (OECD, 2024).
- Improved job quality:
- AI can enhance job quality by automating dangerous or monotonous tasks, allowing workers to focus on more fulfilling activities (OECD, 2023).
- Empowered citizens, civil society, and social partners:
- AI can empower individuals and organizations by providing tools for better decision-making and engagement in public life (OECD, 2023).
- Improved institutional transparency and governance, instigating monitoring and evaluation:
- AI can enhance transparency and governance by enabling better monitoring, evaluation, and public engagement (OECD, 2024).
CURRENT POLICY EFFORTS
- Recognition of AI’s potential:
- National and international policy initiatives often acknowledge the importance of AI’s potential benefits, such as accelerating scientific progress, advancing economic growth, and improving living standards (OECD, 2023).
- Job quality considerations:
- While job quality is important, it is often overshadowed by concerns about job quantity. More focus is needed on how AI can improve job quality by automating dangerous or monotonous tasks (OECD, 2023).
- Institutional transparency and civil society empowerment:
- AI’s potential to improve institutional transparency and empower civil society and social partners should be more widely recognized. Research on concrete use cases is needed to better understand these benefits (OECD, 2023).
- Examples of policy efforts:
- Scientific progress: The EU AI Act provides exemptions for AI systems used in scientific research, and the UK has invested in AI research hubs (EU AI Act, UKRI, 2024).
- Economic growth: Many national AI initiatives provide funding for growth and productivity investments, such as Germany’s EUR 5 billion investment in its national AI strategy (OECD, 2024).
- Reduced inequality and poverty: The EU AI Act includes measures to promote diversity and fairness, and the UK has made investments to boost AI efforts in developing economies (EU AI Act, UK FCDO, 2023).
- Complex issues: The Frontier AI Safety Commitments and UN agencies’ efforts focus on using AI to address global challenges like climate change (UK DSIT, 2024, ITU).
- Decision-making: National AI initiatives include actions for using AI to support decision-making processes, such as Finland’s call for automated decision-making (VARMA, 2023).
- Information production: Governments have initiatives to enhance the value and re-usability of public information and data through AI (OECD, 2023).
- Beneficial services: Many national AI efforts focus on enhanced digital services, such as the US’s AI use cases in healthcare and education (AI.gov, 2023).
- Job quality: Efforts focus more on mitigating AI workplace harms than on using AI to improve job quality (European Parliament, 2021).
- Civil society empowerment: Initiatives like the US National AI Resource aim to ensure AI research resources are broadly accessible (NAIRR, 2024).
- Institutional transparency: Several initiatives seek to use AI for public engagement and transparency, such as the UK’s Algorithmic Transparency Recording Standard (GOV.UK, 2024).
These efforts highlight the recognition of AI’s potential benefits, but more decisive action is needed to fully seize these opportunities and address existing gaps.