If class struggle is the engine of history, as Marx wrote, then it is time to move to mechanical inspection. Over the next decade, generative AIs like ChatGPT could both create untold wealth and threaten hundreds of millions of jobs. But don’t panic: Silicon Valley has the solution.

Everyone suspects that the current advances in artificial intelligence will have a transformative effect on societies everywhere. The American bank Goldman Sachs goes even further and predicts the extent of this transformation.

In analysis Released at the end of March, it confirms that new technologies are currently the loudest booming driver of change. Whether Marx likes it or not, they have little impact on the working class. Above all, they threaten middle management and some of the most prominent professionals in the knowledge economy: lawyers, notaries, writers, etc.

According to Goldman Sachs, generative artificial intelligence, like that embodied in California company OpenAI’s popular ChatGPT, could eliminate as many as 300 million of these generally well-paying jobs worldwide in the next few years. In particular, it could affect workers who are primarily based in developed economies.

Canada, the United States and Europe are in the crosshairs of these really not omniscient but certainly very versatile robots, says the American bank. In these three regions, about two-thirds of jobs are threatened by large language models, called LLM (for “large language models”) by AI experts, says the American bank.

A new fight

ChatGPT and its various imitations will make 300 million jobs obsolete. But they could create $6650 billion in value at the same time.

Because without adding to the irony of such a prediction, Goldman Sachs predicts that these generative AIs — in the sense that they can generate images or text that make sense to us humans — will inflate global GDP over the next decade.

No one at Goldman Sachs dared to predict that affected workers’ wages would be increased to match the productivity gains promised by the advent of these AI applications. If we rely on recent economic booms fueled by the commercialization of disruptive technologies, we can already guess who will benefit from this wave of innovation.

To the bosses, of course. On their website alone, Dall-E draws a picture of Karl Marx laughing into his beard…

The best of worlds

Sam Altman is the CEO and founder of OpenAI, the lab that developed ChatGPT. He doesn’t get a very large salary from his job. The resale of his early businesses made him a wealthy independent person. He regularly meets with Silicon Valley’s wealthiest investors, including Peter Thiel and Elon Musk. He’s one of those bosses most likely to get rich thanks to AIs like ChatGPT.

He’s the archetype of the Silicon Valley tech entrepreneur: capitalist by day, socialist by night. It supports the concept of guaranteed minimum income, the regular payment of a basic salary to all citizens. This concept was being talked about in Canada just before the pandemic. Then, in the first few months of the pandemic.

Thanks to Altman, the guaranteed minimum income is back in the news. It is touted as a universal solution to the coming turmoil caused by AI.

“The main reason for automation is to concentrate wealth (and therefore power) in a very small number of hands. America has repeatedly challenged this type of situation in the past, and we must do so again. »

“What I am proposing today – where we agree to create a floor but no ceiling – would provide a tremendous boost to US prosperity and put us ahead of the global economy. Countries that concentrate their wealth in a small number of families fare less well in the long run—unless we radically move towards a more equitable and inclusive system, we won’t be at the top of the world for much longer. »

“Automation promises to create more abundance than anyone can imagine. It will change our relationship to work. When everyone benefits, we move faster towards a better world. »

Sam Altman wrote this… in 2017. Six years later, he spawned a technology that, if we extrapolate Goldman Sachs’ forecasts, could have two major consequences.

Either it will further exacerbate a wealth gap that previous digital revolutions have already widened over the past twenty years. Or it will make workers so productive and wealthy that they have more time to devote to other activities such as hobbies or family.

On the one hand Karl Marx. On the other hand Sam Atlman. Which of the two theories seems more likely?

To see in the video