Many fear AI will take our jobs. I fear something more banal: We will give them away.
Across half a dozen companies, I've seen AI create more jobs than it takes. As AI gets better, the capacity for jobs will expand and the jobs themselves will become richer and more fulfilling. But the jobs will increasingly demand dedication and vision at a level most people haven't practiced.
Every day the models can do a little more. At first, they offered little beyond autocomplete; eventually, they learned to follow instructions. Already, they can figure out what steps to take better than we usually can, so we’re often better off giving them a goal and letting them work out how to reach it. We still need to be exacting in how we describe our desires, but eventually they will get better at interpreting those as well. We inch closer to the horizon of wish-granting, where the ability to effect change becomes close to free and instant.
This is where most of us will stop giving them goals and start giving away our goals. The purgatory of granted wishes starts when getting a wish granted is easier than crafting a novel one.
Soon, the fuel of expansion will turn from execution to imagination and desire. Not whimsy and fleeting dreams, but a demanding and exhausting vision. Work is intrinsically hard, and the more we can do, the harder it will get. There is something grueling about wrestling desire into form, refusing to stop or let it fall from your grasp. This is the pain of artisanship, and the future of work: an infinity of things that can be done, and a purgatory for those who are content not to do them.
