How AI will divide the best from the rest

AT A summit in Paris on Feb 10 and 11, tech bosses vied to issue the most grandiose claim about artificial intelligence (AI). “AI will be the most profound shift of our lifetimes” is how Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s boss, put it. Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, said that it would lead to the “largest change to the global labour market in human history”. In a blog post, Sam Altman of OpenAI wrote that “in a decade perhaps everyone on earth will be capable of accomplishing more than the most impactful person can today”.

Altman’s prediction taps into an established school of thought. As large language models first gained popularity in the early 2020s, economists and bosses were hopeful that they, and other AI tools, would level the playing field, with lower-skilled workers benefiting most. Software capable of handling tasks such as protein-folding and poetry-writing would surely democratise opportunity. Jensen Huang, chief executive of Nvidia, a chip designer, envisioned a future in which workers “are all going to be CEOs of AI agents”.

More recent findings have cast doubt on this vision, however. They instead suggest a future in which high-flyers fly still higher – and the rest are left behind. In complex tasks such as research and management, new evidence indicates that high performers are best positioned to work with AI. Evaluating the output of models requires expertise and good judgment. Rather than narrowing disparities, AI is likely to widen workforce divides, much like past technological revolutions.