On Wednesday, the Stockholm Concert Hall will host the ceremony to honor this year's Nobel Prize recipients, including the three economists recognized earlier in the fall for their work on how technology and innovation drive economic growth, but also how it can lead to inequality.

The winners included Philippe Aghion of France; Joel Mokyr, a professor at Northwestern University; and Peter Howitt, professor emeritus at Brown University in Rhode Island. Howitt recently joined “Marketplace Morning Report” host David Brancaccio to discuss the transformative — and potentially disruptive — impacts of artificial intelligence on human jobs. The following is an edited transcript of their conversation.

David Brancaccio: Regarding AI and prosperity, is this time different? Do you worry that this AI stuff is going to ruin more lives than it then it helps?

Peter Howitt: Well, I do worry. You know, we don't see a good reason yet for thinking that it's not going to be like other general-purpose technologies that have come to us and eventually benefited us a great deal, starting with the steam engine and going through electrification and now AI. These things have always sparked off fears of automation, technological unemployment, redundancy, and they have indeed created a lot of job loss, typically. But in the end, they've created new jobs that were never even thought of before.

Brancaccio: And I try to keep a strong focus on economic inequality. When you put an inequality overlay over this question, some people are going to get a lot more prosperous because of AI. But the question becomes, will it make more people unprosperous? I guess is one way to think about it.

Howitt: Well, that's certainly one of the big worries. In preparing my Nobel lecture, just out of curiosity, I went and asked ChatGPT to write a serious paragraph on the job-destroying potential of generative artificial intelligence. And within five seconds, it produced this really pithy and very accurate and actually quite subtle paragraph. I'm thinking, "OK, if I was a speech writer — if I was really, really good at it —  I could be writing speeches 10 times as fast as I used to be, using this sort of thing is a first draft." And that's a recipe for growing inequality. Some people are going to earn tremendous amounts, and others not so much. However, it might be that there are other new services that we can start providing with one another that are going to make other people just as productive, as well, and it's going to spread the wealth.

Brancaccio: Now, to be clear, you ended up writing your Nobel lecture, right? You didn't let ChatGPT do the final product?

Howitt: Yes, I did. I included one little paragraph in there, just for effect. But I'll tell people that wasn't really me.

Brancaccio: OK, OK, OK — as long as [there’s] full disclosure, right? Would you want to let the development of AI go unregulated?

Howitt: No. Personally, I would not, because there are always choices that you could make with the development of a technology. And some ways have more potential for destroying jobs, others have more potential for making jobs more productive. If you can't bring a majority of people on board in a democratic system, you're going to have trouble deploying that technology to its full advantage. People are going to find ways to block it through the political system and places other than just in the marketplace.