The advance of technology has been marked by milestones. Kindled by Prometheus’ gift of fire and turned on the spoke of the first wheel, human ingenuity has increased exponentially with time. Progression begets progression, till what was the first programmable computer, weighing over 27,000 kilograms and taking up more space than most homes, evolved into a supercomputer that fits in the palm of your hand.

The latest technology that promises to transform our lives is artificial intelligence (AI). While AI has been developing for decades, it received sudden and broad acceptance in November 2022, when OpenAI released ChatGPT. For his work in developing AI, Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, is viewed by many as a modern-day Prometheus.

While fire cooks, purges, and warms, experts in many industries warn that it also burns – AI has the potential to cause people to lose jobs, create deepfakes, and increase socioeconomic inequality, among other concerns. But AI is also very promising, and Altman staunchly defended it at the 2024 World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland.

At WEF, Altman shared his visionary insights on the future of AI, particularly focusing on generative AI, a field in which OpenAI has made groundbreaking advancements. With the rapid pace of technological innovation, Altman’s perspective sheds light on the potential and challenges ahead.

1. AI will enhance people’s productivity

Similar to how people trailblazed in the early days of the internet, AI is being experimented with constantly. Design, coding, writing – nothing is off limits. These are all new frontiers for AI advocates.

I think a very good sign about this new tool is that, even with its very limited current capability and its very deep flaws, people are finding ways to use it for great productivity gains – or other gains – and understand the limitations.
— Sam Altman

Altman is alluding to a balance. Experimentation will happen, but this must be tempered by an understanding of the AI’s limitations. Are we at a point where companies should replace bookkeepers with AI? Probably not. But can bookkeepers use AI to halve the time it takes to complete manual processes? Absolutely.

AI is already enhancing dusty, archaic institutions and programs. Most people think of it in a business context, like copywriting, but it’s also impacting less obvious industries such as healthcare, manufacturing, and energy.

2. AI might replace some workers but will also create new opportunities

A legitimate concern is that with this improved efficiency – with AI filling traditionally human roles better and more expediently – many workers will be replaced.

Creative destruction has been part of the human work cycle for centuries. When lumber mills replaced lumberjacks with chainsaws and tree harvesters, workers were still needed to build, fix, and operate the machines. Then, the lumber mill sent more wood to the paper mill, which churned out more products. It then needed additional resources from its supplier and more millworkers.

This example of creative destruction is the nature of the industrial beast. AI might replace some jobs, but roles will be reinvented and workers will find new direction.

AI has been somewhat demystified because people use it now, and I think that’s always the best way to pull the world forward with a new technology.
— Sam Altman

Essentially, Altman suggests that a proximity bias – the tendency for people to favor that which is physically closer to them – will sway public opinion. The more people use AI, the more comfortable they will be with it, leading to further progress.

Another example Altman has given for the continual need for human touch is the care people can show each other. AI cannot recreate that. Nor can it replicate the excitement of human competition. Altman has pointed out that “almost no one watches two AIs play each other [in chess, but] we’re very interested in what humans do.”

French President Emmanuel Macron speaks with the CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman on the sidelines of the WEF meeting in Davos
Source: Getty Images

3. AI regulation should be on humanity’s agenda

The last prong to look at when considering the adoption of AI is safety. This leads us to the question of how we can ensure the technology’s ethical development and deployment. Altman poses the question that if we don’t regulate AI, who will? Pandora’s box has been opened, and Prometheus has already handed over the fire – no matter what, AI is here to stay. The one thing Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, and other tech titans agree on is that AI needs oversight.

We believe in iterative deployment, so we put this technology out into the world along the way, so people get used to it, so we have time as a society — our institutions have time — to have these discussions to figure out how to regulate this, and how to put some guardrails in place.
— Sam Altman

While Altman – perhaps, as the CEO of the for-profit company OpenAI, the one person who benefits most from wide AI implementation – might be biased on whether deploying AI is beneficial and necessary for humanity, there are legitimate questions about its safety. Altman’s position indicates that, no matter our personal misgivings, this technology is going to continue to advance. Now is the time for leadership and the people most affected by AI to figure out how it should be regulated and what place it should hold in our society.

Final thoughts

While the rapid advancement of AI might seem intimidating, Sam Altman exhorts the positive impact it can have. By highlighting AI’s potential to increase productivity by optimizing simple processes and creating new roles for people to fill, Altman argues that we have an opportunity to harness this power for societal advancement – but first, we need to enact common-sense regulations.

There are valid concerns about the existence and deployment of AI. However, much like fire, it is a transformative tool whose negative or positive impact depends on who is wielding it. Consider the adage, “With great power comes great responsibility.” According to Sam Altman, our approach to AI should be governance, discourse, and caution, but AI can be the flame that helps humanity reach the next stage of evolution.

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