Adam Smith for modern times

It’s never simple to imagine what Rip Van Winkle would have done if he hadn’t slept for just 20 years but for several centuries and woken up in the current era of artificial intelligence (AI)! It’s interesting to note that a similar scenario was provided on ChatGPT’s webpage as an introduction when it was first released roughly nine months ago. There was conjecture as to what might have occurred  when Christopher Columbus visited the United States in 2015. “He would probably be shocked” by seeing the present United States which is a multicultural nation with people from all over the world, as perceived by ChatGPT. “He would likely be amazed by the
advances in technology, from the skyscrapers in our cities to the smartphones in our pockets.”

Other historical giants can be put into a similar thought experiment. Adam Smith, the father of economics, came under this purview during his tercentenary this June. In his 2009 essay in the New York Review of Books, Amartya Sen wrote that the popularity of quoting Adam Smith seems to far exceed that of reading him. Well, that may be the reason he has been recast so many times. 

Also Read: Why India risks falling behind in the AI race

Even in her speech at Smith’s 300th birthday celebration, the IMF’s Gita Gopinath observed that while Adam Smith would have been pleased if AI led to increased productivity, which determines a nation’s wealth, he would have been deeply troubled by AI’s potential to cause job losses and widen social divides. It’s really speculative, though. However, it’s according to Smith’s legacy and work. Adam Smith was an influential economist and philosopher of the 18th century, and is often associated with his seminal work, The Wealth of Nations, which laid the foundation for classical economics and free-market capitalism, and also with another important book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Thus, his legacy should combine the two.

Computers didn’t exist when Adam Smith wrote, but when they were initially used in business and industry, they were seen as a means of enhancing the process of division of labour. Curiously, academics frequently questioned whether Adam Smith could be reframed as a traditional behavioural economist. Richard Ennals of Kingston University, UK, presented an imagined philosophical conversation between Adam Smith and Dutch businessman Paul Fentener Van Vlissingen and German artist Joseph Beuys in his 1997 paper titled Art, Artificial Intelligence and Wealth: Dialogue with Adam Smith, in the journal AI & Society. Adam Smith developed models and theories, and sketches of how systems functioned in order to aid understanding, not as recommendations. He was fascinated by the new machines that formed a part of the emerging industry.

“We see here a source of inspiration for Herbert Simon’s work in both economics and artificial intelligence,” wrote Ennals. Remember Herbert Simon? He got both the Economics Nobel Prize and the Turing Award. As stated by Amartya Sen in his 2010 article titled Adam Smith and the contemporary world, published in the Erasmus Journal for Philosophy and Economics, “To listen to distant voices, which is part of Adam Smith’s exercise of invoking ‘the impartial spectator’, does not require us to be respectful of every argument that may come from abroad.” In a recent article titled Artificial intelligence moral agent as Adam Smith’s impartial spectator, Nikodem Tomczak of NUS Business School in Singapore argued that Adam Smith created a version of moral philosophy where better decisions are made by questioning an impartial spectator within us. This is further discussed in the context of the power of AI.

Tomczak asserted that we could perhaps, at least partially, substitute or augment the impartial spectator with external artificial moral  agents that would provide us with hints on how our actions are viewed by others. Augmenting the impartial spectator with external artificial moral agents needs a perfect synchronisation of human intelligence with artificial intelligence, which is never easy. Gita Gopinath reflected, “This time, as we confront the power and perils of the artificial hand, we need to summon every ounce of our  empathy and ingenuity – the very things that make human intelligence so special.” 

Therefore, it might be challenging to summarise how Smith’s contributions are still relevant today.

(The writer is the professor of statistics, Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata)