Hey Everyone,
The fundamental place of AI in our lives is only going to increase. AI data centers will double in scale over five years. Large language models and specialized AI chips will increase in specialization and application, creating a world with more embodied artificial intelligence all around us. Compute will get cheaper, AI operating systems will be more efficient, technology will get better.
It will be relentless, comparatively fast, AI will slowly and then quickly – begin to change everything everywhere all at once.
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2024 marks a turning point in how we choose to see the world of technology quickly enfolding us with greater convenience, utility, interoperability making us both more productive employees, more creative and giving us more opportunities to do more with less. AI also improves customer relationships, making them higher margin thus creating more revenue and growth opportunities for products and companies.
Technology Orientation & Spectrum – Optimism vs. Pessimism
Techno-optimism can be broadly defined as the belief that science and technology will be able to solve the major social and environmental problems of our times, without fundamentally rethinking the structure or goals of our growth-based economies or the nature of Western-style, affluent lifestyles.1
Image source. 2
“When Americans think of “technology” they tend to imagine some complicated piece of machinery — maybe something with a screen. But I prefer to think of it in the sense of the Japanese word 技術, which can also mean “technique” or “skill”.” –
The 技術 of AI is going to get more advanced in the next twenty years, in ways we cannot yet fully imagine. If Technology is the glory of human ambition and achievement, the spearhead of progress, and the realization of our potential3 , what will we become as we increasingly use AI as both a tool and as it increasingly become a part of our augmented identity?
We already live in the age of AI. The initial development stage of the AI economy of the current wave began in 2022, in just the one year and change since OpenAI brought its ChatGPT system to proverbial life in November 2022, has already started to surpass the pace of technical progression outlined by Moore’s Law.
Is it time then to be to be Techno-Optimist and let go of some of our insecurities of what the future might bring? The full potential of generative AI—in transforming business functions; reducing costs; disrupting product, service, and innovation cycles; and creating efficiencies might also unlock a new era of entrepreneurship. AI might facilitate an increasingly broad range of people starting their own startups.
In the future of work, we could apply AI to rebuild the middle class. AI could be engineered to be a jobs creator and growth driver. David Autor is a renowned labor economist and professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who studies how technological change and globalization affect workers. He said in a recent essay:
“Barring a massive change in immigration policy, the U.S. and other rich countries will run out of workers before we run out of jobs.”
The industrialized world is awash in jobs, and it’s going to stay that way. Four years after the Covid pandemic’s onset, the U.S. unemployment rate has fallen back to its pre-Covid nadir while total employment has risen to nearly three million above its pre-Covid peak. Due to plummeting birth rates and a cratering labor force, a comparable labor shortage is unfolding across the industrialized world (including in China).
What is for sure is that AI will change the labor market, more robots will enter the workforce and new jobs will be created for a new kind of economy. I call this the Machine AI Economy and in my coverage of emerging tech, there is a lot to be optimistic about. AI will transform science, healthcare, finance, biotechnology and education in ways that will empower most of humanity, in just the transformation of a few decades.
AI will fundamentally improve economic growth and growth prospects in ways that can compound, empower developing countries and converge with foreign investments like we are seeing with India. Young demographics, AI and foreign investments will be powerful drivers for the global economy in countries where an AI transformation can fully take place. If China is the new Japan, India is likely to be the new China.
A world of AI is one where workers are more productive and consumers have better relationships with brands and better margins which leads to incentives that keeps growth in positive feedback loops. AI facilitates innovation and science which will lead to explosion of new kinds of jobs and new roles in society never seen before.
AI & Economic Growth: Survey
I agree actually with Jensen Huang (黃仁勳) who said this week (February 12th, 2024) that every country needs to have its own artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure to take advantage of the economic potential while protecting its own culture. National governments need to build their own AI architecture and LLMs that relate to their cultural and ethnic distinctiveness and genius. We cannot let technology homogenize our culture or limit our opportunities for those of us who are late adopters both individually and collectively.
To thrive we must embrace change, seize on all the benefits AI might have to offer. This requires an ideological openness to experiment with new tools and to harness and entertain new possibilities. In fact, technology – new knowledge, new tools, what the Greeks called techne – in the scope of artificial intelligence, may even be a bigger and more central source of growth than today in 2024 we suspect.
If expertise is the primary source of labor’s value in the U.S. and other industrialized countries. AI empowers those of us with less education and or skills to be able to reach our potential. AI if managed correctly might stimulate even underprivileged workers to rise up into the Middle Class or higher. AI could actually help rebuild the Middle Class and it’s an important point to make.
The era of Artificial Intelligence heralds another such transformation, comparable to a more educated highly-skilled society. AI might democratize skill acquisition and labor optimization in markets. White collar workers might become more productive, and blue collar workers might have help in repetitive tasks to satisfy their tasks, performance and customers even better.
Humans are adaptable and innovative and AI will usher in a time of massive opportunities. But how we react to this depends on us. It depends on our education level, our socio-economic status, it depends on our relationship with technology and the way we see the future. Not all of us will seize the day as radically or as transparently as we could.
AI might drive the market economy in new and surprising directions. AI might help us correct aspects of Capitalism, that is like an automation itself of a growth-seeking equilibrium that is forever exploratory, evolutionary, and an adaptive system. Capitalism will leverage AI and ultimately, AI will have to finetune and optimize Capitalism for people. It’s one of the most important events of our age. Just as many Billionaires end up giving away the majority of their wealth back to society or invest in interesting projects, the spoils of AI will eventually be dispersed equally, not at first, but in time.
The advances that AI allows in science, healthcare, well-being, longevity, the creation of new jobs and improving the labor market, will trickle down to Billions of people. I believe that AI will make us fundamentally more innovative, more creative and more entrepreneurial. Software and new tools will enable us to do things we weren’t capable of doing before without them. AI will give humans more time, and even a four day work week might become achievable in some parts of the world.
AI will boost Global GDP and help us navigate many challenges humanity and civilization are facing in the decades ahead. AI will transform education, and robotics will transform manual labor. Utopian visions of the future will help us mould AI and the Machine Economy into a more benevolent system than the one we currently have today. There is a lot of work to be done on this. AI will drive human progress forwards and help civilization continue.
All the wonder and excitement around AI can translate into a better world. It’s easy to see the faults of our current systems and how AI might be used against us. However just like any tool its our responsibility to use all the tools at our disposal for our economic progress and for our family’s and our community’s well-being. We are lucky to have been born in an era where artificial intelligence might enable us to do things that previously weren’t possible. Consider carefully all the full implications of this in your life and career.
AI & Career Development: Personal Poll
If our technological optimism is correct, “productivity growth throughout the economy will accelerate dramatically, driving economic growth, creation of new industries, creation of new jobs, and wage growth, and resulting in a new era of heightened material prosperity across the planet”, says Marc Andreessen. While it’s not easy to trust a Venture Capitalist up front, trusting that AI can be a huge driver of economic growth, opportunity and the creation of new kinds of jobs is more easy to relate to.
As we approach a demographic winter, as we manage our debt, as we contend with more climate change events and geopolitical tensions, AI is a bright spot in how we navigate these challenges as a civilization. Being more optimistic with regards to technology might also facilitate our economic growth and creativity using AI in a positive manner in our own lives.
While I enjoy being contrarian, and since I’m from a lower socio-economic background in my personal history, my default is to be more negative, skeptical, stubborn and rebellious. It’s not easy for me to admit that but common sense dictates AI is a huge opportunity for a generation now growing up with it. AI will create economic and social surplus and trigger events that were previously not possible. How individuals capitalize on these, could be life altering for them and their families.
An AI economy will converge with other emerging technology trends that will fundamentally help civilization and empower millions of individuals. It seems obvious that technological change, far from reducing the need for human work, increases it, by broadening the scope of what humans can productively do. AI will be a net job creator and manifest jobs we never even imagined or dreamed possible. It will be quite astonishing.
The humans that take our place in this world through the natural course of history will harness AI in ways that will make our efforts look like only a small beginning. AI will enhance the quality of our lives in so many ways. AI will rejuvenate new kinds of growth and make our markets more resilient. AI will supercharge our markets as generative, not exploitative; positive sum, not zero sum. But technology is just one component of the human story of civilization, a background that facilitates all that we do, a context in a state of becoming.
AI facilitates a world where software improves how we are augmented by new tools at our disposal. The Cloud continues to evolve and new kinds of computing are born. AI could give birth to a potential future where we harness the power of AI to create a whole bunch of good jobs for people who have been left behind over the last few decades. AI might be the key to unlock new growth in Nations and countries left behind in relative stagnation.
David Autor makes some good points4 in how AI will shape the future of work. It’s important AI doesn’t leave folk behind. A lot of policy, alignment, regulation and improvements need to take place for AI’s impact to empower and not disrupt. AI needs to help us improve the distribution of the labor market so each individual is able to find their place in it with less friction. That’s the world we should be dreaming about, where AI facilitates a more dynamic, vital and equitable society.
AI also needs to help us avoid periods of costly prolonged unemployment. According to one study, men’s labor force participation has been steadily declining since the 1970s, and workers are experiencing greater labor market precarity – that is, shorter job spells. AI needs to help address the situation and not allow anyone to be left behind like this.
Image: the Myth of Men’s Full-time Employment
AI & Jobs: Perspective
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The Techno-Optimist Manifesto by a16z
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