Ethan Mollick reflecting on the recent report by OpenAI which evaluates AI model performance on real-world economically valuable tasks
Does that mean AI is ready to replace human jobs?
No (at least not soon), because what was being measured was not jobs but tasks. Our jobs consist of many tasks. My job as a professor is not just one thing, it involves teaching, researching, writing, filling out annual reports, supporting my students, reading, administrative work and more. AI doing one or more of these tasks does not replace my entire job, it shifts what I do. And as long as AI is jagged in its abilities, and cannot substitute for all the complex work of human interaction, it cannot easily replace jobs as a whole…
…and yet some of the tasks that AI can do right now have incredible value.