The Invisible Hand and Artificial Intelligence
The invisible hand is a metaphor conjured up by the Scottish economist and philosopher Adam Smith in the 18th century. Lest you think economics and philosophy are two entirely different things, they weren’t at that time. Economics was considered part of philosophy. But what does the invisible hand have to do with Artificial Intelligence?
A lot more than one might think. In fact, it may well be the invisible hand that decides, alongside culture, just how successful AI becomes in our near future. While it may appear that the role of AI within our society will be determined by Tech Giants like Amazon, Google, Microsoft and potential giants like OpenAI and Anthropic, you can take some small comfort that it will not be decided by them.
In a world driven by mining our personal data for profit, where business seeks to quantify everything and senior management still hangs onto the long past best before date of Taylorism, the inevitable hand has always been the counterforce.
But first, what is the invisible hand? It is the actions of people in the choices we make about what products and services we choose to buy. The invisible hand has shaped entire economies for thousands of years, as well as politics. Both elements of culture.
