However, as we step beyond the shimmering facade of this digital paradise, we find a harsh reality: this utopia, these incredible expressions of humanity and our potential, would only exist for those with the resources to pay for them.
Artificial Intelligence has emerged as a transformative force in the modern world, revolutionizing industries, enhancing productivity and reshaping the way we interact with technology. While AI holds immense potential for societal progress, its widespread adoption also raises concerns about its impact on socioeconomic disparity, particularly in healthcare and education.
Educational inequalities infect nearly every facet of the American education system. In fact, one of the most accurate predictors of a child’s academic performance is their social class and disparities in academic success materialize early in a student’s education.
As former Columbia researcher Emma García and educational policy expert Elaine Weiss write in a 2017 report for the Economic Policy Institute, “…social class is the single factor with the most influence on how ready to learn a child is when she first walks through the school’s kindergarten door. Low social class puts children far behind from the start. Race and ethnicity compound that disadvantage, largely due to factors also related to social class.”
With the adoption of AI or even tech in general, technological literacy is going to become and already is one the most valuable assets in the modern world. Students coming from a higher social class will have better access to these technologies, which in turn increases their technological knowledge therefore increasing their success rates.
Especially due to the pandemic, the digital divide between the technologically literate and illiterate, largely demarcated along racial lines, is growing exponentially. This growing divide has the potential to significantly widen educational inequalities, as those who lack access to or proficiency in technology may find themselves at a severe disadvantage in accessing educational resources, participating in the modern workforce, and even engaging with crucial aspects of daily life.
Yet educational disparities don’t emerge or exist in a vacuum and lack of access to education correlates strongly with lack of access to healthcare, another field threatened with wider access gaps in the face of the increasing adoption of AI.
Just as in education, the disparities emerge in the early stages of a child’s development — similarly, these disparities often occur along class lines. As social epidemiologist Michael Kramer writes in an article for the National Library of Medicine, “Social class gradients in children’s health and development are ubiquitous across time and geography.”
In a report published in May of this year, the CDC estimated that 27.6 million Americans, approximately 8.4% of the population, lack healthcare coverage and these people often face difficult choices between seeking necessary medical care and the financial stability of their families.
The consequences of such decisions can be irreversible, as delayed or neglected medical treatment can lead to worsened health conditions and increased healthcare costs in the long run, which, in turn, hurts their chances of seeking or completing their education.
AI-powered diagnostic tools, remote monitoring, and other AI-driven functions have the potential to significantly improve access to healthcare services, especially in underserved and remote areas. However, not everyone has access to the necessary technology or internet connectivity, creating a gap in who can benefit from AI-driven healthcare solutions.
Even worse, implementing AI in healthcare can be prohibitively expensive. Smaller healthcare facilities and those in resource-limited areas may struggle to keep up with the latest AI advancements, widening the gap at both the individual and provider level.
The potential impacts of these inequalities are devastating. Because access to education and access to healthcare correlate with and predict each other, we are staring down the barrel of a feedback loop that will only get worse with time and the widespread adoption of AI. As more and more societies integrate AI into their economies, more and more people will lose their jobs, an estimated 800 million, according to a 2017 report from the McKinsey Global Institute.
As unemployment rises, particularly among already at-risk populations working jobs in primary or service sectors, more people from those same populations will lose access to healthcare. The more integrated AI becomes, the more upskilling in the job market will freeze these unemployed workers out of the market. Without access to good educational programs, these workers will have no way to bridge the ever-widening technological, educational and medical divide.
Ultimately, if we do nothing to address these inequities, the AI utopia of the future will be built on the backs of a majority too poor, sick, and uneducated to participate in it.
