Charles I. Jones, a professor of economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business, recently published a paper called “AI and the Future of Our Economy.” In it, he describes several scenarios. The first is business as usual, made possible by commodity technologies that innovate enough to generate steady economic growth until the next big innovation.
In a more optimistic scenario, AI will fundamentally redirect everything we understand about economics and human experience, leading to infinite abundance. “This is a story that Sam Altman, Demis Hassabis and Dario Amodei have been telling for over 10 years,” Jones said on a new episode of the show. If/then Podcast. “We are right on the path.”
As for the future of work, Jones is relatively optimistic, pointing to the many difficult or impossible components of the majority of jobs (with the exception of software engineering) that are difficult or impossible to automate.
But he also acknowledges the existential risks looming. “We are actively creating superintelligence that is more powerful than us,” he says. “Maybe it won’t end well.”
Overall, Jones is optimistic about the AI-powered economy that is just around the corner. “I think the ability for AI to do everything on a computer is something that the best software engineers can do, and that either already exists today or will exist in five years,” he says. “So hacking the power grid, hacking the financial system, these kinds of scenarios are things that we definitely have to worry about. The good news is that if we somehow get through that, the ability of AI to change the economy for the better is actually there and will be. And it’s going to be a very nice and bright future.”
