AI won’t just reshape work and markets, Joseph Stiglitz says it will quietly rot the information those systems depend on. As large language models (LLMs) scrape our sarcastic Reddit comments and loud marginal voices on extremist forums, the Nobel laureate warns of a world where everything looks more data‑driven, yet the underlying data is increasingly, well, “garbage.”
“In the case of AI, I think there are a couple of other deeper problems,” the economist told Fortune. “We have not only a problem in the labor market … but there’s another side of what I would call information externalities,” which Stiglitz describes simply as garbage in, garbage out (GIGO).
