Forum: The economic and finance committee (ECOFIN)
Question of: The question of the role of artificial intelligence (AI) in creating economic policy
Main submitter: South Africa
Co-submitter: Norway, Spain, Germany, Yemen, Chile
THE ECONOMIC AND FINANCE COMMITTEE,
Defining Artificial Intelligence as defined by the European Union as "software that is developed with machine learning, logic, and knowledge-based or statistical approaches, and that "can, for a given set of human-defined objectives, generate outputs such as content, predictions, recommendations, or decisions influencing the environments they interact with",
Noting with satisfaction that AI deployment can increase overall productivity and create new products, leading to job creation and economic growth, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) estimates that AI deployment will add $15.7 trillion to global GDP by 2030, the impact of AI is likely to disproportionately affect populations in the developing world,
Keeping in mind, artificial intelligence will boost the need for workers of certain skill sets and render others redundant,
Fully aware that AI algorithms can show biased results when written by developers with biased minds and that artificial intelligence does not make mistakes it only follows its programming. Since there isn't any transparency about how the decision-making processes run in the background, the real users cannot be sure about its fairness,
Emphasising that AI does not need to get paid and does not need to get any off time such as (vacation, week-end, etc.) making it cheaper than Human workers,
Guided by the definition of economic policy being, an economic policy is a course of action that is intended to influence or control the behaviour of the economy, Economic policies are typically implemented and administered by the government,
Declaring that AI has a positive effect on the development of businesses, innovation and research in the world through reduction of possible errors, providing digital assistance and helping to make faster decisions for the economies,
Pointing out that 91% of top businesses have ongoing and increasing investments in AI and 78% of companies consider the AI as safe and reliable for the economies,
Conscious of the possible high costs of creation of AI, potential rise in unemployment in the economies as well as possible rise in hacking of the systems,
Confident that AI can increase the productivity, boost the economy and therefore provide economic growth and technological development of countries around the world,
Desiring to receive international support for the AI to further improve people's welfare, provide sustainable development as well as further improve the technologies that contribute to the economic growth of the countries,
1) Promoting the development of human capital in AI through the development of a large base of skilled employment, the provision of training and education opportunities. (a wider range of university courses and professional training will be offered in order to help the country train the next generation of AI professionals);
2) Boosting the deployment and use of AI technologies in both the public and private sector, including also cross-cutting sector activities and grand challenges;
3) Ensuring inclusiveness in the AI-driven economy, by increasing awareness of if any gender pay gaps and digital divides while also suggesting solutions to reduce said gaps and divides;
4) Further promoting the inclusive and sustainable use of AI as a tool that can be used to help the country cope with necessary transitions such as climate change and grow their economy;
7) Encouraging schools and educational programs to start teaching about Artificial Intelligence. Better understanding of AI might be achieved through:
a) Further encouraging students at schools as well as universities to study a variety of subjects to gain skills for the development of AI at a young age. The special skills may include areas such as mathematics and statistics as well as computer science, programming and coding, engineering,
b) Having professionals come and educate about AI,
c) Facilitating students to make presentations or posters to increase personal knowledge of AI;
8) Calls upon member states either to provide jobs for people who became unemployed as a result of replacement with Artificial Intelligence or the workforce must adjust to the growing interaction between humans and machines. Increased number of machines usually decreases the number of manual workers in the production process. This may be achieved through:
a) Creating subsidies to encourage production in an economy and motivate the workers to produce more in order to boost the economic growth,
b) Further creating new jobs to avoid increased unemployment rates in the country,
c) Setting tax-deferred training accounts that will allow workers to borrow money and pay it back with the future income or;
9) Calls for public-private cooperation for both sectors contribute to development and further advancing the AI in the country. For instance, money generated from taxes will increase the total revenue of the government therefore it is easier to invest in development of AI;
10) Urges to ensure the safety and security of the AI through the involvement of highly skilled workers in the development and improvement process. The development of the AI must include professional training for a broad spectrum of workers. Safety and security may be achieved through involvement of professionals such as:
a) Network Security Engineer and Cyber Security Analyst that are focused on cyber security and cyber defence. Their job is to avoid hacking and personal data stealing through analysing the patterns from the past and predict the future patterns,
b) Researcher who discovers ways to advance AI technology,
c)Software Engineer who develops programs and tests function of AI;
11) Wishes to provide better quality of life and to ensure the benefits of the AI outweigh its costs, keeping in mind all the risks and human rights;
12) Requests member states that have already or are planning to implement AI systems to ensure that the AI remains in an exclusively advisory role to the respective governments and that the AI should require human approval before taking any action.
