OpenAI’s “Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age,” released on Monday, shows that the AI lab is not only thinking about how superintelligence will affect consumers, but also how it will affect enterprise employees whose jobs might be obliterated by AI technology.
The generative AI vendor’s policy proposal envisions an AI workforce in which enterprise workers are given a voice in the AI transition. In the document, OpenAI said workers will be important voices in understanding how AI is used in workplaces, so they should be allowed to prioritize AI deployments that improve job quality. The ChatGPT maker also encouraged investment to offset AI’s impact on work, wages and job quality across industries and sectors.
OpenAI’s proposed policies and initiatives (such as a four-day work week) come amid speculation about the potential of AI creators to develop superintelligence, a theoretical form of AI that is smarter than human intelligence.
In the policy proposal, the vendor sought to show the possible implications of superintelligence, even as it moves toward that goal. At the same time, OpenAI acknowledged the situation enterprise employees face in a shifting job market driven by AI. Some employees in the legal and tech industries are beginning to feel the effect of AI agents that excel at coding and knowledge-based tasks, such as summarization and data gathering.
And some organizations are also blaming AI for their decision to lay off workers. For example, Oracle eliminated as many as 30,000 roles globally this month as it works to restructure and become an AI compute provider. Executive chairman and CTO Larry Ellison has said that development teams are now leaner by design because AI models are now writing much of the code.
Signaling to Employees
Amid a weakening job market and other potential impacts now being seen due to increased AI use, such as energy costs, societal impacts on children, and mental health, OpenAI’s policy indicates that the AI lab is aware of the challenges posed by AI. In the policy document, the vendor suggested changing the country’s taxation approach by raising corporate income and capital gains taxes, particularly on AI-related revenue, and lowering or eliminating taxes on labor income.
“They’re trying to signal to society, to their users and to the current and future employees that they are sensitive to disruptions in employment,” said Michael Bennett, associate vice chancellor for data science and AI strategy at the University of Illinois Chicago.
However, many of the proposals from the AI lab are not substantive, said Chirag Shah, a professor in the Information School at the University of Washington.
“I wish they would actually take a stand and recognize the role that they are playing and also acknowledge that one of the choices or one of the options is not to do this,” Shah said, referring to the idea that OpenAI could choose not to forge ahead toward its goal of creating superintelligence.
He added that OpenAI can also take a more active role by involving affected interest groups, such as labor unions and educational institutions.
“They’re not taking real responsibility. They’re just saying, ‘We warn you, you guys need to get ready for this,'” Shah said.
A Protective Measure
On the other hand, OpenAI’s policy could be a way to protect itself, Bennett said.
“The broader societal implications of the technology … the economic impacts, environmental impacts, labor impacts, education impacts, political impacts, none of the big AI companies wants to be on the hook for failing to pose in advance, ways to avoid or mitigate them,” he said. “That’s especially the case for companies like OpenAI that are looking to go public, to do an IPO.”
Therefore, OpenAI benefits from not having to develop a more concrete plan for the problems it poses and how it specifically plans to address them, since that is more the job of the federal government.
“The beauty of that is that OpenAI can say we contributed substantively a set of proposals for dealing with problems that we and others in the industry anticipate. And now it’s up to our leaders,” Bennett continued.
Along with solutions such as a tax on corporate gains, OpenAI is also creating a pilot program of fellowships and focused research grants of up to $100,000 and up to $1 million in API credits for projects that help develop some of the economic models it suggested.
