The US government is considering laws to help society adapt to the introduction of artificial intelligence.
Early adopters of the technology are already seeing gains in labor productivity. For example, Klarna, a buy-now-pay-later financial services company, estimates that its AI assistant will increase its bottom-line results by $40 million by the end of 2024.
“It's basically doing the work of 700 full-time agents,” Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said in an interview with CNBC. “He's basically been able to take care of two-thirds of all the incoming missions we do via chat.”
Klarna's AI assistant is built on OpenAI platforms, which power both ChatGPT and Sora — two products that have captured the attention of both the general public and Congress.
In 2023, members of Congress held panel discussions, private dinners, and educational sessions with high-level technology executives including Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. The White House followed up by seeking a commitment from 15 private industry leaders to help lawmakers understand how best to identify risks and take advantage of new technologies. The list includes some of the biggest players in the technology sector, along with new entrants like Anthropic and OpenAI.
The Senate AI Task Force, created in 2019, has passed at least 15 bills into law focused on research and risk assessment. But when compared to the measures approved by the European Union in 2024, the regulatory environment in the United States appears relatively relaxed.
“People in Brussels have come up with a lot of bureaucratic rules that make it difficult for companies to innovate,” Erik Brynjolfsson, a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, said in an interview with CNBC. “The entrepreneurial environment doesn't exist as it does in the United States.”
Economists have expressed concern for years that artificial intelligence could lead to poor job prospects for white-collar workers, similar to the effects globalization has had on blue-collar workers in the past. A study conducted by the International Monetary Fund indicates that at least 60% of work in advanced economies will be exposed to changes resulting from the widespread adoption of artificial intelligence.
In 2023, lawmakers in the New York State Assembly introduced a measure to limit the expected impact of technology-related layoffs and tax robots. The idea is to impose a cost on companies that use technology to displace workers within the state. As of April 2024, the bill remains in committee with an uncertain future.
Many economists have said that taxes on robots, if used at all, should be set at a relatively low level. In the United States, both employers and employees face payroll taxes of 7.65% of income. But the optimal robot tax rate would be between 1% and 3.7%, according to researchers at MIT.
“It's good for us to have production and productivity. So I'm not sure we want to tax them,” Brynjolfsson said. “Robots are part of what fuels technological growth and gives us higher productivity.”
“There will be a time in the future when robots can do most of what humans currently do,” Brynjolfsson said. “We're not there yet.”
Watch the video above to learn more about the US government's plan to regulate artificial intelligence.
