Digital Business: A Force for Good?
Paper Session
Friday, Jan. 3, 2025 10:15 AM - 12:15 PM (PST)
- Chair: Rojhat Avsar, Columbia College Chicago
Will Generative AI Bring Change: Technological Disruption and Redistribution in the USA?
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to discuss, from the perspective of Original Institutional Economics (OIE), the potential implications of generative artificial intelligence (Gen-AI) for income redistribution in the USA. Specifically, we examine whether the proliferation of Gen-AI might shift the preferences of high-income groups towards nonmarket insurance and greater income redistribution, due to their increased risk of future income loss. Considering the opinion that Gen-AI could be our final invention, due to its potential for self-learning and incredible productivity, and recognizing Gen-AI's disruptive potential for workers performing non-cognitive tasks, we argue that AI-based automation will request new institutional arrangements. These institutional arrangement changes would promote the redistribution of income generated through economic processes with minimal human participation. Such institutional arrangements are largely reflective of the OIE ideas of an economy of abundance and the institutionalization of good work, with the job as a socially constructed institution at its core.Keywords: Generative Artificial Intelligence, Institutional Changes; Income Redistribution, Original Institutional Economics, USA.
JEL: B15; D63; O33, O38.
Winner Street Award - The Economic Assumptions in Brazilian Judicial Discourse on Ride-Hailing Platforms
Abstract
Among the many challenges present in the attempts to regulate ride-hailing platforms in Brazil, the litigations against the misclassification of these workers in their transactions with the platforms, whether as employers or independent contractors, and the debates over fair competition, can be said to have represented the central focus of debate. Although these issues have been treated in the realms of the Judiciary power, the constitutional interpretation of this phenomena has relied heavily on economicconcepts as treated in different traditions of economic thought, which has a direct effect on the results of the judges’ decisions. By adopting a Commonsian approach to the investigation of the Brazilian Supreme Court’s decisions related to ride-hailing platforms, this paper aims to identify the habitual assumptions adopted as the basis for the decision-making processes of the justices. These habitual assumptions, as Commons noted, represented prevailing customs of the time and place, and were the basis for an adequate comprehension of how transactions occurred. As we conduct this investigation which has as its main objective the discussion of how economic concepts have been used to shape the court's decisions on cases involving ride-hailing platforms, we will also: (i) discuss Commons’ concept of habitual assumption, (ii) classify courts orientation in terms of economic school, (iii) debate the limitations or possibilities of institutional change in face of the courts’ current habitual assumptions. Finally, this work aims to contribute to the recent debates on the regulation of digital platforms in Brazil.
Role of Government in Changing Institutional Furniture for Firms in Digital Economy – Mixed Blessings from China
Abstract
Despite the various positive reports on the progress of the digital economy, its expansion in the Western societies has also been perplexing when firms are pursuing technologies yet the welfare of the workers is undermined and the real growth of the economy inhibited (e.g., “the digital storm” as per Galbraith 2014). In contrast, such dilemmas are less prevalent in China. A reason for the difference can be traced back to the specific role of the Chinese government in shaping the business routines.In this article, the cultural attributes of entrepreneurship and technostructure of firms in the Western and Chinese contexts are addressed. Then, the role of the Chinese government in advancing the development of its digital economy since the 2000s is shown by scrutinizing the empirical evidence. Therefrom, I argue that the Chinese government has successfully but controversially changed the “institutional furniture” (a notion of Veblen ([1904] 1932 and [1919] 1961) to discipline (or even moralize) firms in the digital economy. However, throughout this newly instituted process for production and exchange, the progress of firms in China is clearly influenced by the friction between their corporate culture and political interests. Besides, differences in the political culture of China and the Western countries also curb the global development of these firms. To achieve progressive ends in the digital era, I argue that effective communication between a government and firms in the country and among governments of different countries is necessary.From Cowboy to Astronaut: How Can We Limit the Destructive Force of the Tech Leaders’ Vision of Competition?
Abstract
The development of the tech industry, through the growth of digital equipment and services, is responsible for significant carbon emissions and environmental damage (GIEC 2023). Digital services rely on high levels of energy consumption, are predatory in the use of natural resources and generate large quantities of electronic waste. For this reason, and in order to achieve an effective ecological transition, it is essential that tech leaders commit themselves and steer their companies towards a development consistent with the challenges of sobriety. Based on a qualitative survey, this article aims to shed light on the contradictions between the objectives of environmental issues and the ideology of American tech leaders. Interviews reveal a Darwinian vision of competition, with the underlying idea that there is no monopoly. Tech industry leaders are therefore driven by a logic of conquest, a logic of “always more”. Vision and values represent the most powerful lever for transforming our societies (Abson et al 2017; O’Brien 2018). This article highlights the need to design institutions that limit the destructive power of tech ideologies, particularly the obsession with competition. The first step in this institutional transformation should be to implement a better regulation to use the power of legislation and force tech leaders to stop thinking of themselves as cowboys in the days of the Wild West conquest, where resources were perceived as unlimited, and instead consider themselves at the heart of Spaceship Earth (Boulding 1966; De Graaf and Jans 2015).Institutional Analysis of Artificial Intelligence in Creative Industries
Abstract
AI embodies the human brain’s incredible capacity for creating institutions as a form of delegation of its (costly and effortful) cognitive functions to its automatic system that can be trained to perform many complicated functions effortlessly. The sophisticated capacity for institution building separates sapiens from non-human animals who have their versions of institutions (e.g., the hunting patterns of dolphins). This capacity is a double-edged sword. It serves emancipatory functions while being susceptible to the disproportionate appropriation of public knowledge for private gains by the few and to the emergence of excessive power asymmetries. AI increasingly threatens the creative industries, as the technology can turn publicly accessible (digital) creations into somewhat differentiated commodities. Although inspiration is the source of new creations (whether the creator is a human or a robot), no single human brain is capable of molding countless artistic expressions into a commodity that shares some features but is differentiated from them all at a speed and efficiency AI can accomplish this task. The result is the devaluation of creative intelligence/labor as it reduces it to a series of algorithms that are, in fact, only capable of generating commodified quasi-creations.JEL Classifications
- D0 - General
- O3 - Innovation; Research and Development; Technological Change; Intellectual Property Rights