Like you perhaps I used to be a knowledge worker in the 1980s, prior to the Apple Macintosh, Excel, and Powerpoint. I remember when I first saw a computerized spreadsheet, an Excel precursor called Visicalc. It was adding up rows and columns of data, it was copying and pasting data and formulas. I thought, "Oh my god, that is my job!" I was an accountant and at the time I got paid for making manual spreadsheets, charts and slides that would take far less time now, even without AI. What saved me, as the production of these outputs fell and fell, was that there was plenty of important 'knowledge work' to do BEYOND the grind of spreadsheet preparation. It seems clear that new AI tools will unburden us from the drudgery of data preparation, analysis, and reporting. But there will always be decisions to make on top of the analysis. There will always be a need to decide what should be the next prompt to the AI.
Or maybe you think the AI will take that over too?
Maybe it’s fine? I suppose that in, like, 1890, junior investment bankers spent all their time calculating Ebitda with quill pens and abaci, and when Excel was invented everyone was like “but how will our analysts receive the training they need to become partners if the spreadsheet just does it for them,” and in fact there was huge growth in investment banking jobs and profits and modern investment bankers know way more about finance, though less about abaci. Still I am not sure that “well ChatGPT can do anything an analyst or associate would do, so let’s just put this 22-year-old in front of clients” is the right answer?
Awesome to hear that story about spreadsheets and it definitely feels analogous. I think that is what is most likely in the next ~15 years -- that AI will reduce drudgery but free up a lot of new, higher level activities
But, if it becomes a "general" intelligence that can make sound decisions in lots of different contexts, it's not clear to me what role humans would need to play other than doing things in the physical world to expedite the decisions made by an AI. And the odds of that happening seem fairly high to me now, 50x higher than I would have said even 2 years ago
Like you perhaps I used to be a knowledge worker in the 1980s, prior to the Apple Macintosh, Excel, and Powerpoint. I remember when I first saw a computerized spreadsheet, an Excel precursor called Visicalc. It was adding up rows and columns of data, it was copying and pasting data and formulas. I thought, "Oh my god, that is my job!" I was an accountant and at the time I got paid for making manual spreadsheets, charts and slides that would take far less time now, even without AI. What saved me, as the production of these outputs fell and fell, was that there was plenty of important 'knowledge work' to do BEYOND the grind of spreadsheet preparation. It seems clear that new AI tools will unburden us from the drudgery of data preparation, analysis, and reporting. But there will always be decisions to make on top of the analysis. There will always be a need to decide what should be the next prompt to the AI.
Or maybe you think the AI will take that over too?
Thought you'd like this from Matt Levine:
Maybe it’s fine? I suppose that in, like, 1890, junior investment bankers spent all their time calculating Ebitda with quill pens and abaci, and when Excel was invented everyone was like “but how will our analysts receive the training they need to become partners if the spreadsheet just does it for them,” and in fact there was huge growth in investment banking jobs and profits and modern investment bankers know way more about finance, though less about abaci. Still I am not sure that “well ChatGPT can do anything an analyst or associate would do, so let’s just put this 22-year-old in front of clients” is the right answer?
Awesome to hear that story about spreadsheets and it definitely feels analogous. I think that is what is most likely in the next ~15 years -- that AI will reduce drudgery but free up a lot of new, higher level activities
But, if it becomes a "general" intelligence that can make sound decisions in lots of different contexts, it's not clear to me what role humans would need to play other than doing things in the physical world to expedite the decisions made by an AI. And the odds of that happening seem fairly high to me now, 50x higher than I would have said even 2 years ago