The World Is a Mess. Can AI Be the Savior?
The Current Situation: Not Trump, But Stagnation
We live in a time where the global economic system feels broken. Political instability, rising inequality, and societal unrest are on the rise. It’s easy to point fingers—Donald Trump, Brexit, the war in Ukraine, or the aftermath of COVID-19—but these are surface symptoms of a deeper, systemic issue.
As Aaron Benanav outlines in his article, the underlying cause isn’t one politician or one nation’s policy. It’s global economic stagnation. Growth has slowed dramatically across much of the developed world. Productivity gains—the engine of economic expansion—are increasingly rare. Even as technology advances, the broader economy has failed to keep pace.
Robots and automation were once hailed as the forces that would usher in a new era of abundance. But the problem isn’t that we lack technology—it’s that we aren’t seeing widespread benefits from it. Even in countries like Germany, South Korea, and Japan, known for their technological prowess, industrial employment continues to decline.
The Group of 20 nations, which represent the world's major economies, now struggle to reach even modest 3% annual growth rates. Their solution? Massive public spending and stimulus—but even this hasn’t fixed the problem. Productivity remains sluggish. Birth rates are dropping. Debt levels are soaring.
We’re not just in a moment of crisis—we may be in a new era of slow growth. One where the old tools—tax cuts, stimulus packages, monetary easing—don’t work the way they used to.
Can AI Be the Solution?
With traditional economic levers failing, attention turns to new technologies—chief among them, artificial intelligence. Could AI be the engine that pulls the global economy out of its slump?
There are good reasons to be hopeful. In the service sector, AI is already transforming the way we work. Coders, designers, marketers, even lawyers are using AI to streamline tasks, reduce costs, and increase efficiency. In manufacturing, automation continues to spread—China, for example, is now installing more industrial robots than any other country.
The potential is enormous: AI can increase productivity, lower costs, and create entirely new business models. It may not solve the stagnation crisis overnight, but it can help shift the trajectory. Like the internet before it, AI could be the next general-purpose technology that redefines how we work and live.
Yet it’s not a magic bullet. As Benanav points out, even the best technologies struggle to revive economies that are structurally sluggish. AI can increase productivity in some sectors, but it doesn’t automatically create the widespread demand necessary for growth. It doesn’t fix broken housing markets, environmental crises, or underfunded education systems.
My Take: Think About It
So—can AI be the savior?
Well, think about it. AI isn’t going to give birth to more people to fix our demographic crisis. It won’t magically increase consumer spending in a world where wages are stagnant. But it might just be one of the few levers left that can jolt the system.
Used wisely, AI can improve efficiency, reduce repetitive work, and open up creative opportunities. It can assist public planning, support infrastructure development, and help green the economy. But it can also be misused—deepening inequality, replacing jobs without creating new ones, and concentrating power in fewer hands.
In the end, AI is a tool. It reflects our priorities. If we choose to use it to enrich lives, expand opportunity, and support sustainable development, it could help steer the world out of its current mess. If not, it might just become another chapter in a long story of failed promises.
The world is messy, yes. But the way forward might just depend on how we choose to think about—and use—the tools we’re developing today.