For our series, A Fordham Focus on AI, we’re speaking with faculty experts from a range of disciplines about the impact of this rapidly evolving technology and what to expect next.
In this installment, we sat down with Giacomo Santangelo, PhD, senior lecturer of economics. An expert in areas such as inflation and consumer debt, Santangelo aims to create a model that can help policymakers prepare for AI infrastructure and its economic impact.
When it comes to the economics of AI, what lessons can we learn from the past?
We did not have an opportunity to discuss economic justice during the Industrial Revolution. With AI, we’re undergoing a revolution that’s just as big. But we have the opportunity to do it with the knowledge of all the economic injustice that resulted from previous technological revolutions. With the rise of the information age and access to what feels like unlimited information, we should be able to make better choices than we have in the past.
As a Catholic, Jesuit university, Fordham is perfectly positioned to talk about how AI should be a tool that’s going to help us become men and women for others. When we’re building it, using it, and talking about it, we should consider not just how it’s going to help companies’ bottom lines, but also how it’s going to make our society better.
Historically, we’ve just sort of accepted that the wheels of progress are going to crush some people and cause them to lose their livelihoods. But we don’t have to crush people. We can do this responsibly.
How does your research connect AI data centers to larger questions of equitable costs and benefits?
Whoever is building a data center, an airport, or a factory wants to save money, so they build in areas where land is less expensive. Cities and municipalities also want to attract business, so there’s a natural alignment of incentives. What interests me is how the benefits and costs of these projects are distributed geographically.
To give you a recent example, in 2019, there was a debate about whether to have Amazon build a second headquarters in Queens. There was a lot of pushback from people who said that even though it would benefit Amazon nationally, it would actually have an adverse effect on the immediate community in the long run. That happens to be true. But it got me thinking, where is the economic model that supports this idea?
I found that there were no models that talked about how the agricultural revolution hurt farmers but helped the country. There was no discussion about how the manufacturing revolution in the 1800s helped the nation but hurt communities.
So right now, I’m working with my colleague Marc Conte on a model that will show how the economic gains of industrialization are concentrated in regions far removed from where the costs are borne. We’re hoping to offer a mathematical framework that policymakers can use to make better decisions about AI data centers. The intent is that they’d be able to use this information to more broadly increase the distribution of benefits that AI will bring and lessen the potential for inequality.
What’s one thing you want people to know about AI and progress?
AI is best understood as the next stage in a very long story about automation. We’ve been having versions of this conversation since ancient irrigation systems. What’s different now is that we have far more information and analytical capacity than previous generations. That gives us an opportunity to be more intentional—to ensure that as the benefits of AI expand, we’re also thinking carefully about how those benefits are shared.
Learn more about AI for the greater good at Fordham
