Labor market and AI researcher Christian Kellermann brings exciting perspectives to the debate about artificial intelligence. In the interview he explains how artificial intelligence can lead to shorter working hours if we fight for it.
Christian Kellermann: “I assume that large AI language models, just like steam engines or electricity, are a general-purpose technology that can reach into areas where we have seen little progress in productivity over the last 150 years, for example Example in cognitive-creative areas. And these productivity gains can also be distributed, but this is not automatic – just as it has not been automatic in the past 150 years.”
Kellermann is optimistic that AI will not lead to mass unemployment because AI can take over individual tasks in many professions, but rarely all of human tasks. In doing so, he contradicts the horror figures that speak of millions of jobs lost.
In his research, but also as a novelist, he also deals with the potential of AI in medical research, especially in the calculation of proteins. He believes that AI is a powerful tool to cure diseases. However, with his near-future novel “Adam and Ada”, Kellermann warns of the danger of allowing ourselves to be controlled by AI or of believing that technology can solve all of our problems.