By Dambisa Moyo
Three Ways AI Will Change the Course of Humanity | Over the long sweep of history, three forces have driven humanity’s greatest transformations, for good and ill: disease, war, and economic growth. By reducing costs and increasing the availability and productivity of a vast array of goods and services, AI will have a profound impact on all three.
History is littered with plagues and pandemics that altered the trajectory of human population growth. The Black Death, for example, killed 75–200 million people across Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and North Africa between 1346 and 1353.
Thanks to technological advances and medical innovations that helped prolong life expectancy and reduce infant mortality, the global population has grown from one billion in 1804 to two billion in 1927 to more than eight billion today. At the same time, however, the advent of effective contraceptives has helped contain population growth.
AI promises to accelerate this progress, improving both the quality and quantity of human life through preventive diagnostics, faster drug discovery, and more personalized medical care. In doing so, it could reduce the human and economic costs of non-communicable diseases like cancer and neurodegenerative brain disorders, including Alzheimer’s. It could also enable faster responses to outbreaks of communicable diseases by predicting where viruses are likely to spread and how mutations might unfold. In fact, AI is already being used to combat antimicrobial resistance.
Perhaps most notably, AI could drastically reduce health-care costs, which have been largely immune to past technological advances. As a 2022 American Enterprise Institute chart showed, US hospital-service costs rose more than those of all other goods and services over the previous quarter-century.
Wars represent the second force that has repeatedly changed the course of human history. An estimated 70–85 million people died during World War II, nearly 30 million of them in the Soviet Union. These losses had far-reaching demographic and economic consequences for the USSR, especially since so many of those killed were working-age young men. More generally, armed conflicts destroy productive capacity, disrupt everyday life, and deter the investments needed to stimulate economic growth.
Technological advances have of course made war far more destructive. World War I was the first large-scale mechanized conflict involving mass-produced guns, tanks, and aircraft. WWII, in turn, catalyzed a massive military-industrial buildout, pulling the US economy out of the Great Depression and fueling decades of postwar growth.
AI is now ushering in a new era of technology-driven conflict as countries increasingly rely on drones and autonomous weapons. In Ukraine, drones account for 70–80% of battlefield casualties. AI-powered systems are also playing a growing role in the Iran war, from accelerating mine clearing in the Strait of Hormuz to tracking submarines and gathering intelligence.
The third major driver of historical change is economic upheaval. In the aftermath of WWI, hyperinflation devastated the German economy, setting the stage for the rise of Nazism. Similarly, the 1929 stock-market crash—together with 1930s banking panics and the Dust Bowl—plunged millions of Americans into poverty, with encampments of displaced people (“Hoovervilles”) springing up across the United States.
But economic transformations can also bring enormous gains, even as they create disruption and despair. The Industrial Revolution unleashed rapid productivity growth, raised living standards, reconfigured societies, and propelled human development to new heights.
Much of this was the result of rapid industrialisation and mechanisation, which continued to redefine the relationship between capital and labor well into the 20th century as workers moved from agriculture to manufacturing and then into the services sector. In the US, agriculture’s share of employment fell from more than 40% at the turn of the 20th century to less than 2% today.
Early studies suggest that AI will supercharge productivity, particularly in knowledge-based industries, though evidence of its direct contribution to economic growth remains inconclusive. A 2018 McKinsey Global Institute report estimated that AI could add roughly $13 trillion to global GDP by 2030, while a 2023 McKinsey report projected that generative AI could deliver $2.6–$4.4 trillion in economic value annually.
Yet AI’s destructive potential is just as great. Warnings of an AI-driven “jobocalypse” have become increasingly common in recent years, with Silicon Valley venture capitalist Vinod Khosla predicting that AI will be capable of performing 80% of existing jobs by the early 2030s, rendering traditional employment obsolete.
Whether or not these grim predictions prove accurate, widespread job displacement could upend the structure of economies and societies. It could also greatly expand the role of the state, as governments face growing pressure to provide income support.
To be sure, the AI super cycle is in its early stages. But even now, it seems inevitable that the technology will radically change how we combat disease, fight wars, foster economic growth, and, ultimately, how we understand what sets humanity apart.
Three Ways AI Will Change the Course of Humanity | AviationGhana | Project Syndicate
