Wharton's Mollick: "Doom" overshadows real AI risks
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The AI industry's obsession with existential risk is diverting attention from the more immediate threats, Wharton professor Ethan Mollick told Axios in a discussion around his new book, "Co-Existence," billed as a field guide to AI.
Why it matters: Mollick's view provides an intellectual middle amid a sea of doom and hype surrounding the future of AI.
This conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
Axios: What do you think about the AI researchers sounding the alarm about existential risks?
Mollick: "Obviously we should worry about the apocalypse. ... But I worry that the focus on existential risk is stealing all the attention."
- "There's actually 1,000 other things that I'm really worried about that are already going to happen."
- "There's going to be an effect of AI on jobs, so we need to be doing a policy response to think about how do we encourage AI to be used for augmentation rather than automation."
- If we steer the panic about AI to "it's going to kill us all," we won't be able to talk about anything else, he says.
Axios: Like, what if it doesn't kill us all, and we're here to have our jobs get taken away ... we're gonna wish we talked about that!
Mollick: "Well, and also, why can't we think about how to guide this to make this better?"
- "We also should be trying to focus on the upsides. We have a technology that has the potential: that is both damaging schools and has the potential to be a universal tutor. We have a technology that might be able to change health care for the positive, not just 'cure cancer.'"
- "I really am worried that we're not dealing with all the other stuff along the way, which is like, how do you do this in a way that augments work, ...We get to make choices on how this technology works."
Axios: Can we do that, though, when the CEOs under pressure to deliver profits are the ones adopting this technology?
Mollick: "I talk to CEOs all the time, and I think they don't know what to do with this technology."
- "Most CEOs I talk to know that pure automation is not what they want either. ... That's not how you build competitive advantage, is fire all your staff and replace them with AI."
- "Jobs tend to evolve, which could also feel catastrophic or exciting, depending on the kind of job you have. It's not like everything is happening immediately."
Axios: What's the biggest AI story journalists are missing right now?
Mollick: "I would love deep dives into actually what's happening in companies."
- "I'm shocked at how little worker-manager perspectives come up. It's all tech people talk."
Axios: How are you personally using AI? Did it come up while writing your book?
Mollick: "I use it for everything. But I also use it consciously because I'm somebody who's been using it for a while."
- "My new book is an example. I write the drafts myself. But AI is a superhuman researcher at this point. It found errors, not just in my writing, but in the sources I was citing."
- "As long as you center yourself as a person in this, there's a lot you could do that doesn't destroy the kind of core work that you do."
