White House Council of Economic Advisers Chairman Christopher Phelan said during a Breitbart News “State of the Economy” policy discussion that artificial intelligence could be a transformative technology while arguing that its role in the economy is to assist workers rather than substitute for them.
Breitbart News Washington Bureau Chief Matthew Boyle asked Phelan about the economic impact of artificial intelligence and why President Donald Trump is focused on the technology.
“In my opinion, AI is another transformative technology in a world history where we have seen transformative technologies before,” Phelan said. “I mentioned earlier in this interview, 80% of the people used to work on farms. That’s because that’s what it took, so that we had enough calories not to die.”
“As things have progressed, you know, if you need 80% of the people doing, you know, working on the farm in order not to starve … then that means that you don’t have many people left to do other things to give us what we see in this world,” he continued.
“So I see AI as — and it has not been the end of the world that we were able to have machines to help with farming, or machines to help with manufacturing. We have not seen now some jobs get replaced. There used to be people who, when you made a phone call from one place to another, somebody had to physically pull out a plug, move it to another slot, and put it somewhere else,” Phelan said.
“Those people were then able to move to something else that gives us, again, the standard of living that we have,” he added.
“So we do not see in the data that companies that use AI more are laying—are having fewer workers. In fact it’s the opposite. Hiring companies that use AI more are hiring more than companies that use AI less,” Phelan said.
“I do see it as potentially transformative, like many previous transformative technologies. But I don’t see it as substituting people. I see it as another tool that complements people,” he concluded.