This is probably an important piece of writing, we just don't exactly know why yet. Not because he’s necessarily right about everything, but because he’s running one of the most consequential companies of our time. In some way or another, we'll have to deal with his perspective.
First of all, publishing what amounts to a blog post on a subdomain rather than a folder is pretty interesting. That's suggests a certain level of importance; it's not one post among many, but a standalone piece in a category all its own.
For all that import, there’s not much of novelty or substance here and it all sounds very safe. I suspect a large desire for this piece was to mint the "Intelligence Age" label, a rather clever inversion of AI. It's curious that this so-called Intelligence Age has arrived only when the intelligence is artificial.
In several different ways, he places AI's "magical" advances firmly within a familiar human history: grandparents ("and the generations that came before them"), society, genetics, various Ages, and "years of compounding scientific discovery". Artificial Intelligence is just another tool in a long line of tools.
The optimist in me loves a line like, "...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" — and yet I can't help but hear the political undertones.
To his credit, he acknowledges the unavoidable labor challenges associated with any technology. Labor is a gnarly political problem that will prove to be a massive factor in upcoming legislation and elections.
The last paragraph is both intriguing and challenging. Comparing "trifling wastes of time" and the prosperity of current days decouples perceived value of work and its outcomes. Predicting the future of work is notoriously difficult, yet we all assume a positive incline. The hedonic treadmill strikes again.
Above all, it reads like a manifesto for a revolution Sam hasn't announced yet. He's getting ahead of something. It's a preview, a tease; obviously, enthusiastically optimistic, maybe over-the-top so. Unabashedly e/acc, with the self-awareness to get a head of the criticisms and inevitable tradeoffs of an oncoming inevitability.
I can’t help but wonder what Sam knows that he hasn’t shared yet.
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The biggest blind spot in AI — and technology at large — is that of values. Every product has a philosophy, every technology embodies the values of those who designed it. When folks talk about choosing social media algorithms and industry-specific LLMs, they're talking about value optionality: the ability to choose a particular lens, focus, and perspective on the world or a task.
Often unaware of this, designers press on, impressing values upon those impacted by their innovation. To his credit, I see no indication that Sam (or the other leaders shaping OpenAI) is unaware. I don't see Sam as being malicious, but one's downsides are another's collateral damage.
In my mind, labor markets barely fall into this category. They change as a matter of course, this is simply an acceleration. My job didn't exist when I was a kid, it only exists because of rapid advances in technology, and I'm pretty sure my work is going to dramatically change in the next 2-5 years. I don't get mad about it, though; I adjust (sometimes slower than I'd like).
More than what we do, I'm concerned about how AI will impact what we think, how we think — do we think?
Also to Sam's credit, he doesn't really have a choice to be anything less than fully optimistic. The dependencies are vast, the stakes are high, and the demand is insatiable for the foreseeable future. He's bearing a tremendous responsibility for the future of this industry and those dependent on it (which at this point is every other industry).
But he's not the only one with responsibility: the rest of us need to own the decisions we make and the values that drive us to do so. There's a sneaky progression here: The more we use a technology for small things, the more easily we'll use it for big things, the more it shapes how we see it all. Recent history has shown how comfortably we abdicate the development of core beliefs to the innovations we hold in the palm of our hands.
Let us be more discerning this time around.
