How Pro-Worker AI Can Expand Human Potential - Time Magazine

The promise of artificial intelligence reaches beyond faster workflows. As Ravi Kumar S. CEO of Cognizant puts it, “Progress is not just about what we can do. It's about what we choose to do and who we choose to become.” It's about expanding human potential.

In the opening episode of The Human Endeavor, a new series in partnership with Cognizant and TIME Studios, Kumar speaks with MIT economist and Nobel Laureate Daron Acemoglu about turning the promise of AI into shared prosperity.

Acemoglu’s vision is “pro-worker AI”; AI that doesn’t sideline workers via automation but expands their expertise and knowledge so they can perform new things. Kumar pushes further, asking how businesses can redesign jobs so that through working with AI, nurses, bank tellers, and other workers take on greater responsibility and potentially earn more.

“One of the greatest powers that digital technology can bestow upon us is greater decentralization,” Acemoglu says, allowing people to exercise their abilities “with better information and better support from our digital tools. AI amplifies that promise.”

History offers a precedent. Acemoglu points to the automotive industry’s creation of new occupations, which helped increase employment and wages. “We need innovation broadly construed as much as we have ever done,” he says, citing global challenges like climate change and aging populations.

Yet shared prosperity is not assured. “I do believe quite strongly that AI is consistent with shared prosperity, but I do not think getting there is easy at all,” Acemoglu cautions.

The conversation closes by reframing AI’s purpose. Rather than asking technology to solve humanity’s problems independently, Acemoglu argues for putting people firmly at the center. “We should solve with AI,” he says.  The ultimate test of AI will not be what it can do on its own, but how much more it enables people to achieve.