IEEE Technology and Society Magazine - June 2022 - 111

Last Word
Toward Emancipation Through a
Regenerative Digital Economy
George Zarkadakis
Atlantic Council, GeoTech Centre,
Washington, DC 20005 USA
 Let us imagine a different future. Not one
where a handful of corporations control and exploit
our data-or own the machines and the algorithms
that render our jobs obsolete. Not one where the
current state of digital servitude becomes actual economic
servitude of the medieval kind. Not the sci-fi
dystopias of social wastelands, environmental degradation,
and abject poverty. Instead, let us consider
the possibility that we the people, the workers, the
communities, and the citizens exercise our inalienable
right to control our destiny. And that, instead of
letting a small minority enjoy the bountiful rewards
of an automated future, we claim that future for ourselves
too.
Here is a possible scenario then: continuously
self-improving artificial intelligence (AI) systems
automate evermore work tasks and massively
improve human productivity. Production costs drop
exponentially and tend to zero. If we accept the proposition
that most problems societies are challenged
with are essentially engineering problems, then given
enough time and ingenuity all these problems are
solvable. AI is a cognitive multiplier across both the
time and ingenuity dimensions-just witness how in
July 2021 AlphaFold managed to solve the 50-yearold
protein-folding problem in molecular biology in
a just few minutes [1]. By simple extrapolation, the
economy of an automated future is one of enormous
wealth creation where labor is largely canceled from
the equation of capitalism. Instead, economic value
Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/MTS.2022.3173328
Date of current version: 14 June 2022.
June 2022
is produced mostly by a combination of capital and
know-how where AI systems and data are the protagonists.
We must embrace that future, not reject it. It
is humanity's opportunity for achieving Aristotelian
eudemonia, Ober [2] suggests. It is a future where
humans can reach their full potential, free from the
drudgery of slaving for a living. But there is a caveat.
Our current, linear economic model extracts most
of the economic value created by the algorithms
and funnels it into the hands of very few individuals;
our benevolent, and often not-so-benevolent, masters.
The economic externalities of unemployment,
social displacement, and the ever-higher costs of
healthcare and social welfare are passed to governments
that must get into debt to manage the impact
of automation. This is exactly what takes place in the
natural environment too, whenever a polluting factory
sends the bill for cleaning up to society; and just
as we need a new economic model to manage waste
and pollution, so we must find new ways to manage
automation and the loss of income and prosperity
as labor becomes increasingly unnecessary, or-as
we are already witnessing-menial and underpaid.
This new model would be a " regenerative " one:
the economic value created by automation will be
redistributed to the citizens, not extracted. But for
this new economic model to take root we need nothing
less than a revolution. We need a monumental
shift in the power structures of historical proportion,
expecting that the incumbent political and economic
elites would simply relinquish their privileged
access to technology for the sake of a better world
for everyone is pious hope.
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