Ethan Mollick, a professor of management at Wharton, specializing in entrepreneurship and innovation, argues that the discourse around the future of AI is overly apocalyptic. The focus, he suggests, is on the wrong kind of apocalypse. The concern is often about the risks of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI)—an AI smarter than a human being—leading to mass unemployment or AI growing beyond human control.
However, Mollick points out that this focus robs most people of their agency, making AI something that only a few Silicon Valley executives and top government officials have any say over. He emphasizes that we are already living in the early days of the AI Age, and we need to make important decisions about what that means at every level of an organization.
Mollick warns against waiting to make these choices as it opens us up to many little apocalypses, as jobs and workplaces are disrupted one by one, changing lives and livelihoods. He highlights that AI is going to impact how we work and learn, regardless of any pauses in AI creation, and without any further AI development beyond what is available today.
He cites three reasons for this. First, AI supercharges productivity in ways we have never seen before. An early controlled study in September 2023 showed large-scale improvements at work tasks, as a result of using AI, with time savings of more than 30% and a higher quality output for those using AI. Second, AI is affecting a set of workers who never really faced an automation shock before. Multiple studies show the jobs most exposed to AI are educated and highly paid workers, and the ones with the most creativity in their jobs. Lastly, the pressure for organizations to take a stand on a technology that affects these workers will be immense, especially as AI-driven productivity gains become widespread.
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