"His latest spiel is no exception. In an interview with Rowan Cheung at OpenAI's DevDay conference on Wednesday, Altman floated the idea that the work you do today, which might imminently be transformed or eliminated by AI, isn't "real work." The idea was brought up after Cheung invoked his favorite thought experiment of considering how a farmer half a century ago might view our current reality."
""If you told a farmer fifty years ago that this magical thing called the internet is going to create a billion new jobs," Cheung said, "he probably wouldn't believe you." In the "intelligence" era, Cheung said, a billion knowledge workers' jobs will be threatened before new ones are created. Seemingly, Cheung's point is that it's not clear what jobs AI will create several decades down the line,"
Some current jobs threatened by AI are labeled not "real work" and framed as less consequential. A farmer analogy compares past disbelief about the internet's job-creating effects with present uncertainty about AI-driven job creation. The projection suggests a billion knowledge-worker jobs could be threatened before replacement roles appear. The analogy raises questions about the relevance of past technological comparisons when assessing AI's economic impact. The framing can deflect attention from how rapidly automation might eliminate whole categories of professions and from the human and economic costs of that displacement.
Read at Futurism
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