Trying to steelman the economist, I think the big difference is agency. Ok, today’s AIs are more agentic than GPT-3, but definitely still expect orders from someone. It’s like having a hyperskilled immigrant who mysteriously does nothing but sitting idle in a dark room until given explicit orders. There’s no AI equivalent of “wanting a good job and submitting a CV to an employer” (of course Claude can generate a self-promotion document and mail it to employers, but it’s not going to do that on its own).
The futurist’s bubble is probably full of AI enthusiasts who try every new model, but it’s useful to remember that a lot of normal people out there definitely don’t use AI in their everyday routine. I personally know more than one small business owners (in non-tech sectors) saying that they tried AI in their business and then abandoned, cause it was very disappointing and error-prone. Are those people morons who don’t know the best way to extract value from the AI? Maybe. But a huge difference in value between a mediocre boss employing actual hyperskilled immigrants and a mediocre boss using hyperskilled AI in a mediocre way doesn’t seem so implausible to me.
Trying to steelman the economist, I think the big difference is agency. Ok, today’s AIs are more agentic than GPT-3, but definitely still expect orders from someone. It’s like having a hyperskilled immigrant who mysteriously does nothing but sitting idle in a dark room until given explicit orders. There’s no AI equivalent of “wanting a good job and submitting a CV to an employer” (of course Claude can generate a self-promotion document and mail it to employers, but it’s not going to do that on its own).
The futurist’s bubble is probably full of AI enthusiasts who try every new model, but it’s useful to remember that a lot of normal people out there definitely don’t use AI in their everyday routine. I personally know more than one small business owners (in non-tech sectors) saying that they tried AI in their business and then abandoned, cause it was very disappointing and error-prone. Are those people morons who don’t know the best way to extract value from the AI? Maybe. But a huge difference in value between a mediocre boss employing actual hyperskilled immigrants and a mediocre boss using hyperskilled AI in a mediocre way doesn’t seem so implausible to me.