The Intelligence Age: AI's Impact on Future Jobs

Explore Sam Altman's insights on AI's transformative impact on jobs and the future of work, as we enter 'The Intelligence Age'. Discover how AI amplifies human abilities and reshapes job markets.

The Intelligence Age: AI's Impact on Future Jobs
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Oct 7, 2024 04:50 PM
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Oct 7, 2024
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Sam Altman's Latest Blog Post

Sam Altman's latest blog post makes some standout points about the impact AI will have on jobs and the "work" we do today. It's not a new point, but it's articulated succinctly in the context of the super-intelligence becoming available to us humans in the next few years. He calls this new era "The Intelligence Age" (like the Stone Age, Industrial Age).
 
  1. Impacts on Job Markets
      • Impacts on the job markets will take much longer than the headlines might suggest.
      • The world is slow to adapt.
  1. Innate Desire to Create
      • It's hard to disagree with his statement about most of us on this planet, who have "an innate desire to create and to be useful to each other".
      • With that assumption in mind, AI simply allows us to amplify our own abilities like never before.
  1. Fearmongering and New Opportunities
      • With every new technology that's come before, there's been fearmongering that jobs will be lost.
      • But people found new work. More fulfilling work.
      • And were ultimately more productive, which led to more prosperity for them.
 

Example: Lamplighters

Sam uses a beautifully simple example:
 
  • Consider hundreds of years ago, lamplighters were common-place. Their job was to light street lamps manually.
  • Then we got electricity and that job was no longer required.
  • What did they do? They found new jobs, and as a planet, we no longer needed to waste time lighting street lamps.
  • Those individuals' output increased, as did their prosperity.
 
It might seem like a silly or overly simplistic example. But our children will find it hard to imagine we did so many of the tasks and jobs that fill our lives today.
 
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Written by

Alex Rainey
Alex Rainey

Alex is an experienced CTO and founder who largely focuses on all the technical areas of My AskAI, from AI Engineering, Technical Product Management and overall Platform Development.