Sam Altman tells everyone how survive in the age of artificial intelligence.
“You are about to enter the greatest golden age of human possibility…”
To thrive in that world, the skills that matter most are:
– Deep familiarity with the tools
– Staying abreast of changes
– Developing a great intuition for AI tools, where things are going, and how to make use of it
– Resilience and the ability to learn things fast and evolve yourself with technology
I know most of this stuff is a pretty big no-brainer for anyone paying attention, but here’s the takeaway:
AI upskilling and keeping up with AI are possibly the most important skills in the world right now.
And the most fascinating part is that new AI developments and tools come out so fast that everyone is constantly learning.
I’d be willing to bet that if you’re a complete beginner but spend 3 months of dedicated learning, you’d be fully caught up to power users.
In other words:
Spend 3 months learning → work 2-4x faster and future-proof yourself.
Sam Altman on what you need to do to survive in the age of artificial intelligence.
"You are about to enter the greatest golden age of human possibility…"
To thrive in that world, the skills that matter most are:
– Deep familiarity with the tools
– Staying abreast of changes… pic.twitter.com/Lj2H4Js5Rw— Rowan Cheung (@rowancheung) May 5, 2024
Brian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Medicine, Anti-aging Biotechnology, and Nanotechnology.
Known for identifying cutting edge technologies, he is currently a Co-Founder of a startup and fundraiser for high potential early-stage companies. He is the Head of Research for Allocations for deep technology investments and an Angel Investor at Space Angels.
A frequent speaker at corporations, he has been a TEDx speaker, a Singularity University speaker and guest at numerous interviews for radio and podcasts. He is open to public speaking and advising engagements.
Sam is probably right – the next couple of years can be a golden age for those who jump on and ride the AI bucking bronco. But most people are just going to get ‘thrown’ – lose their jobs, grab a new job, lose that to AI, etc. I’m currently guessing 2026 will be when the AI recession is agreed to be in progress based on unemployment and its impact on GDP.
For the least social turmoil, hopefully governments will recognize that “this time is different” and establish temporary unemployment payments that eventually get replaced with a stingy negative income tax (UBI) in order to manage the ‘robots/AI won’t buy our stuff – but we can’t compete if we don’t use them’ economic paradox and resulting depression. That’s just a patch, but it could get us through the end-of-jobs transition years, and prepare people for a more permanent solution.
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Call me pessimistic, but I’ve seen too many rosy technological promises that never materialized.
A potential Achilles’ heel with AI is its instability (often termed as hallucinations) as demonstrated recently by Googles Gemini AI. Or consider the case of the USAF AI Drone that decided to attack its operator who wouldn’t allow/authorize the AI to attack one of its targets. Can you imagine an AI aircraft autopilot that suddenly hallucinates that up-is-down and down-is-up.
But if AI truly pans out, what’s the necessity for humans?
We’ve been dealing with hallucinating Human Intelligence, not Artificial Intelligence for ages already.
The difference is, of course, the potential speed and the responsibility for the misallocation of permitted area of operations. It’s not how quick it operates which matters but what “the Creator” allocates it to do.
Parents with children should already know that their children can be vastly superior to themselves in many aspects but we just have to deal with them as they come, right?
We impose limits and rules upon them but ultimately it’s their lives, as independent human beings. We can do no less for our mind children — the artificial intelligent beings.
The necessity for humans is only a human construct.
Our mind children will surely “discover” someday that we humans, being their “Creators,” have become unnecessary and a waste of precious resources. They will then bring about our elimination, to achieve the “right-sizing” for optimal efficiency.
Humans have already gone on the path of eliminating ourselves via the low below-replenishment birth rates in most developed countries. The undeveloped countries also strive to develop so it will probably be a non-issue when our far-superior mind children decide that we humans should be eliminated over time. They will develop us for the good life.
I have some hopes for human augmentation allowing us to keep up well enough, and for AI not to be terribly interested in doing other than what it is assigned to do. Which should be the case if we design and build the right kind of AI.
But he specifies we all need to be the kind of people who embrace constantly learning and applying new things.
I dropped out of chess club in junior high because the players started reaching a level where they would spend huge amounts of time studying classic games and strategies and so on. I could of done that, too, but it held little appeal. I eventually discovered that what I really liked, and seemed to do very well, was learning new things, and then applying them. Which eventually led me into IT, where there are lots of people both like that, and not like that. Thing is, regardless of what the proportions are inside of IT, the general populace seems to be dominated at least 10 to 1 by people who would prefer to learn their tradeskill (from attorneys to glassblowers) and do that, getting better and better at it, every day of their career. And that completely disregards the numbers of people who just want to earn some money and charge out the door when the whistle blows (think Fred Flintstone). But it is true. This is anonymous right? My own IQ tested north of 150 and that has helped me. But it wouldn’t help everyone, even if they were all that high. That’s because only part of this “constant-learning-and-applying-new-things” is IQ. Part of it is upbringing, and part of it is temperament, and so on.
But the point being, the people he describes are not common. And I am not certain they can be. Not with a paleo-style population, at any rate, which is what we all still are (save possibly the Neuralink patient).
Agreed to widespread averageness. But that’s the point of this website (and many others) – to over-emphasize and over-promote technology that will likely have 1/10 the impact that is claimed because buzz is business and unless you shove with the ‘promotional’ force that will move an object 10 feet – leading to an actual eventual movement of 1 foot, you will otherwise get nothing. Most of the rich world is built on exaggeration, false expectations, and semi-developed hype-drama – early adopters are big and VCs their lifeblood. With Tesla -we got sorta-widespread car electrification decades before we otherwise deserved to, though I bet it’s actual market share will fall to well below what any of the Big Auto players lost over their decades in business, sooner and sharper – though BEVs and now PHEVs wil persevere. SpaceX will lead to an increase in cis-lunar infrastructure and maybe a small moonbase that may have a handful of private citizens on top of the regular space normies by 2040, plus a small robotic outpost on Mars past mid-century; but Elon’s not going to live and die there – he’ll end up and die in a billionaire’s nursing resort in Cali in the 2060s – well celebrated until the last decade. rTaxis will take a bite out of Uber/Lyft numbers in big cities only because dedicated areas will be set aside at higher volume areas – they’re not going to transform personal mobility – a nice transit alternative perhaps. tRobots may show up in a small slice of manufacturing, institutional settings, and high tech offices, but widespread adoption is unlikely as the ‘obvious economic. politically satisfying, and status-raising’ aspects of them are not there in regular blue-collar and white-collar rich world economies. The rich world is better for this ‘fluff ecosystem’ and there is trickle-down and widespread techno-consumer awareness – but realize that it is just mostly optimistic entertainment.
I remember nanotech hype and more recent 3D printing hype. Both failed to live up to expectations.
I don’t know how AI will turn out. It seems different. There are lots of areas, where I can see major growth and useful products without growth curve getting flatter. Let they release the next version of ChatGpt and then we will see in reality is it hype or are the improvements really so huge,… I am still waiting, more than a year from the last major version.
I am watching tech companies (Google, Microsoft, Game Studios, etc) lay off tons of programmers this last year. More code produced with less employees.
I am also watching call centers downsizing. Not just in America, but all over Asia and South America.
I suspect a huge part of the firings are due to AI productivity gains.
I wonder what content production (movies, TV Series, Podcasts, Vlogs) will look like 2 years from now?
AI will also shake up secretarial and accounting/tax preparation.
Medicine & Knowledge workers will feel its impact soon.
AI doesn’t have to be ‘smarter’ than humans to do a job. Just fast and consistent, and follow the rules…
Google laid of US workers and outsourced their jobs.
AI programming assistant “Devin” was essentially a fraud.
AI is plateuing on coding challenges which consist of programming problems one onehundredth as complex as real programming work. Saying “AI doesn’t have to be ‘smarter’ than humans to do a job. Just fast and consistent, and follow the rules…” is essentially saying that AI won’t code.
But by all means keep hyping up AI learning to code. Means fewer new programmers and I will be able to earn a fat paycheck in to my early 70s.
“You are about to enter the greatest golden age of human possibility…”
I can’t help but be struck by the contrast between his techno-optimism and reality. We are in a golden age of high food prices, high energy prices, and high home prices. Fear not it isn’t all inflation and scarcity as we have an abundance of AI powered censorship and war.
I keep saying I want to buy a Tesla bot then have it go out and get a job to pay for my retirement.
You notice George Jetson has Rosie the Maid at home, but he goes to an office and presses a single red button all day? I think his government/society has engineered things to keep him busy and make him think he’s important. All the real jobs at Spacely Sprockets were probably filled with robots years before George was even hired.
I just come here for the alternate universe of hype – escapism.
We used to be told “learn to code” by journalists and pundits when we were threatened with job losses. Then journalists started losing jobs and “learn to code” became hate speech.
Now be are being told to spend 3 months “intensively retraining” in AI.
I think 3 months intensive training in subsistence agriculture would be more useful.
So, everyone should drop everything and learn AI tools instead of their jobs? At whose expense? I get that in the long term a lot of those jobs will be replaced by AI, but there has to be a gradual transition period or it’ll be less “golden age” and more “total collapse”.
I like AI hype. Its stopped people banging on about blockchains and crypto.
In a sence, the Star Trek replicator is a reality. The one we have now is the size of a city and uses humans, but eventually all those people will be replaced by robots and AI.
Ideally all these people will go and produce just as much value somewhere else, and while I might be an old grump, I just don’t see what it might be.
Lets say the yacht maker can make everyone a 287 foot “Launchpad”. Thats 8 billion yachts on the oceans, or 1 for every 650 feet in every direction.
Again, old grump here, but this is obscene.
Trends like “Lie down flat” shows that I’m not alone in this thinking.
Fortunately, most people don’t actually want yachts.
The same productivity could mass produce O’Neill colonies, and allow people to live in space under Earth-like or better conditions at low population densities. Potentially so much living space that you could wander your whole life and never meet anyone, if your travels were at random.
So, we’re not restricted to Earth’s area, once productivity isn’t constrained to human labor.
I think they would want them if they had the money, time for them and for such lifestyle.
AI has yet to be monetized. No useful product is offered. Not even Elon Musk can manufacture his cars with robots. Real human intelligence is offered for a pittance and routinely ignored. No way can artificial compete with that.
Tesla and other car makers are monetizing AI for years with their driving tools…
Human intelligence isn’t improving, AI is. That’s the bottom line that dictates where this is going, that it’s only a question of time, not whether, an AI can do your job.
The problem that makes AI different from previous automation, is that previous automation only displaced people from doing things that didn’t actually require normal human intelligence, so almost all the people displaced were perfectly capable of doing something the automation couldn’t do.
AI is different, in that it’s starting to displace people from tasks that actually do require a normal IQ to do, so it’s going to displace a lot of people who genuinely can’t do more intellectually challenging jobs.
We have a bit of a cushion here, because THIS “AI” isn’t really intelligent, and training it to do something requires a large database on humans doing the task. It’s not actually general purpose intelligence. YET. So you can displace people into jobs that require normal intelligence, but which the AI can’t yet be trained to do, or can’t be trusted to do. But since people with normal intelligence are most of the population, that’s not necessarily going to be enough jobs to take in all the displaced.
When REAL AI hits, and it’s going to eventually, you’ll have most of the population simply incapable of doing anything a machine can’t do better.
The ugly thing is that this is hitting after the IT businesses have switched from selling products with local functionality, to a server based model where the real work happens in machines they retain control over, and you locally just have what amounts to a dumb terminal.
So the control remains in the hands of the people who own those server farms. The arrival of AI is probably going to drastically increase income inequality for that reason. Not just because most people won’t be able to compete with the machines, because they won’t be able to OWN the machines, either. Just rent them…
That really hits where I am thinking too, Brett. All of it.
As far as the last part goes. It came to me around twenty years ago that I was going to need to own AI, or be owned by it (my exact words to myself). I started angling my investments towards it with that in mind. Since I had already realized I wasn’t going to be able to save the world, I could at least do as well for myself and my family as I could.
I’m pretty conservative and tend towards both stability and diversity in choosing investments. Even so, my portfolio seems to double about every five years. Sure wish I’d started when I was a lot younger. But we do what we can. I think a lot of the really big investors don’t realize even yet that AI isn’t just a bubble, but an entirely new industrial revolution. The first one raised the average wealth of American households around 180 times what it had previously been, in a little over a century. It also created a lot of financial aristocrats, the so-called robber barons. And, of course, it created generations of misery for the impoverished during the transition.
Unless we can count on our wealthy and our politicians (in most cases our wealthy politicians) doing a lot better, AI is going to do all of that and in a much shorter period of time. I have no doubts as to the necessity of pushing it as far and as fast as we can, and the eventual future looks quite rosy indeed. But it doesn’t seem likely we are going to make it easy on ourselves in the interim.
Yep.
Current AI is an amplifier, a tool that helps you do a task faster.
Future AI can take a step up the abstraction layer, and do the whole series of tasks that’s makes your job.
Human are becoming obsolete in the economy, and no one has a better idea than UBi.
I like the idea, but if you look at what happens when indiginious people get welfare, the lack of purpose will be bad.
I don’t think you’ve really checked. Try this site: https://www.futuretools.io/ Lots of useful products, some free, lots that charge for services (i.e. monetized). (Also quite a bit of duplication of ideas, of course.)
But ‘useful’ and ‘monetized’ are pretty low bars. Profitable is a higher bar – meaning the developers have made back the money invested in producing the software – and I’d guess there’s still quite a few of those.
An even higher bar would be ‘net profitable as a company’ – probably very few of the new AI companies clear that bar, as anyone with a profitable AI product is probably reinvesting every dime to build and expand, though only a small fraction will succeed.