Last week my family and I celebrated Thanksgiving like millions of our fellow Americans…
Surrounded by loved ones and an abundance of food.
But as I passed around the oversized plate of stuffing…
It got me thinking about what abundance might mean for all of us in the age of AI.
Because if Elon Musk, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and famed venture capitalist Marc Andreessen are right…
That word is going to have a whole new meaning by next Thanksgiving…
The Prophets of Abundance
Of the three, Elon Musk is perhaps the least optimistic about artificial intelligence. He has warned that there’s a 10% to 20% chance it “goes bad” with AI.
But that risk hasn’t stopped him from establishing his own AI company, xAI.
What’s his reasoning? Musk says:
I think if I were to assign probabilities, I think it is more likely to be a positive scenario than a bad scenario. It’s just that the bad scenario is not 0% and we want to do everything we can to minimize the probability of a bad outcome with AI.
But I should clarify that I think it’s 70% or 80% likely to be a good future and maybe even a great future. So yeah, I think of the future as probabilities. Nothing’s for sure… the future is a set of branching probability streams… AI really has the potential to make the future amazing if it’s done right.
And what does that amazing future look like to him?
Musk envisions AI and robotics ushering in “an age of abundance where you can have any goods or services that you want.”
Let’s turn to Sam Altman to expand on that idea…
The Intelligence Age
Last September Altman published a blog post titled The Intelligence Age where he predicted:
“It is possible that we will have superintelligence in a few thousand days.”
If he’s right — and I believe he is — then within the next five years we should start seeing some pretty drastic changes to humanity.
Altman writes:
It won’t happen all at once, but we’ll soon be able to work with AI that helps us accomplish much more than we ever could without AI; eventually we can each have a personal AI team, full of virtual experts in different areas, working together to create almost anything we can imagine. Our children will have virtual tutors who can provide personalized instruction in any subject, in any language, and at whatever pace they need. We can imagine similar ideas for better healthcare, the ability to create any kind of software someone can imagine, and much more.
With these new abilities, we can have shared prosperity to a degree that seems unimaginable today; in the future, everyone’s lives can be better than anyone’s life is now. Prosperity alone doesn’t necessarily make people happy – there are plenty of miserable rich people – but it would meaningfully improve the lives of people around the world.
Later he expands on that idea, writing:
“I have no fear that we’ll run out of things to do (even if they don’t look like “real jobs” to us today). People have an innate desire to create and to be useful to each other, and AI will allow us to amplify our own abilities like never before. As a society, we will be back in an expanding world, and we can again focus on playing positive-sum games.”
This is a sentiment Marc Andreessen agrees with.
He sees AI drastically driving down costs of everything while freeing us from doing menial tasks.
In fact, he believes it will lead to people choosing whether or not they want to work.
But with more free time and less to worry about when it comes to basic needs and health care…
What does this look like for folks in the Intelligence Age?
In a blog post from June of 2023, Andreessen envisions a utopic future:
Every child will have an AI tutor that is infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, infinitely helpful. The AI tutor will be by each child’s side every step of their development, helping them maximize their potential with the machine version of infinite love.
Every person will have an AI assistant, coach, mentor, trainer, advisor and therapist that is infinitely patient, infinitely compassionate, infinitely knowledgeable, and infinitely helpful.
Every scientist will have an AI assistant, collaborator and partner that will greatly expand their scope of scientific research and achievement. Every artist, every engineer, every businessperson, every doctor, every caregiver will have the same in their worlds.
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.
Now, I understand this might sound pollyannaish…
But I believe we’re already starting to see it happen.
The Creator Economy
Do you know what the top career goal is for Gen Z… anyone born between 1997 and 2012?
According to a 2023 survey, 57% of this generation wants to be influencers.
They don’t necessarily want to learn art or debate or music or dance… or anything that previous generations needed to put themselves in a position to influence others.
They simply want to influence.
But don’t laugh…
Because 41% of all adults would choose this career too, according to a similar survey.
And in the near future, these folks just might get their wish.
Because the AI tools we have today already allow anyone to create.
All it takes is a few quick prompts to generate stories, art, music… even entire websites.
And AI video is rapidly advancing too.
Artificial intelligence is removing the years it takes to master these skills…
And it’s creating a world where ideas are becoming more important than the ability to execute on those ideas.
After all, that part can be left for the AI.
In other words, we’re witnessing the birth of a creator economy.
And although I realize there are downsides to it…
I also find it incredibly liberating.
The question for you is…
What big ideas do you have that you want to execute on?
Regards,
Ian King
Chief Strategist, Banyan Hill Publishing
