The Promise and Perils of Artificial Intelligence

Ivanna Hampton: I’m Ivanna Hampton with Morningstar. Artificial intelligence is evolving pretty fast. It’s reshaping how some of us think about getting our work done and maybe even raising concerns about the future of our jobs. Zack Kass is a futurist and former head of Go-to-Market at OpenAI. The company name likely sounds familiar because it developed the popular AI chatbot, ChatGPT.

Thanks for being here, Zack.

Zack Kass: Thanks for having me.

What Does It Mean to Be an AI Optimist?

Hampton: You are a keynote speaker at this year’s Morningstar Investment Conference in June. Folks will get to hear about artificial intelligence’s rapid evolution. You refer to yourself as an AI optimist. Let’s start with what that means.

Kass: Well, look, I’ll say this: I think that my view of the future is as rose-colored as it gets, in part because I studied history in college and get to observe, as many historians do, that the world seems to just get better every day. And it’s hard to argue that today is not the best day to be born ever. And so I happen to view AI as a tool to accelerate this historical trend that humans have enjoyed for 100,000 years. And my position is simply that it’s not a question of “will tomorrow be better than today?” It’s “will tomorrow be much better than today?” And can AI actually serve as a superlinear accelerant on our progression?

What Factors Could Derail the Future of Artificial Intelligence?

Hampton: So, staying with this idea of a much better tomorrow: What are the factors that could derail or slow down this optimistic future of AI?

Kass: There are plenty. And I think, let’s also acknowledge that just because I refer to tomorrow as being better than today doesn’t mean that we don’t also get to observe some pretty tough patches. And in the same way that you can’t argue that the world wars didn’t complicate life, that you can’t argue that the black plague didn’t complicate life, we can’t argue that AI may not also complicate life. And every generation pays some sacrifice. It’s not always clear what it is, but it always plays out. And I think two things could go pretty wrong as we start to see this progression of AI. The first is what I call identity displacement. And it’s the theory that our jobs are going to change so frequently and so much, that it’s going to be very hard for people to actually attach their sense of self to their work, which has been a long-standing tradition in this postindustrial society. We’ll talk more about that, I think, in a little bit.

The second risk in all of this is idiocracy. My theory of idiocracy is simply that we might all just get dumber if we start to solve all of the discrete problems. And this is actually sort of playing out in some interesting ways already, which is we’re observing some pretty strange patterns in the younger generation as they consume more and more social media. And it’s becoming pretty clear, I think, to many of us, that the iPhone, as much benefit as it provided society, has actually led us into some pretty strange paths. And that, namely, is this massive decline in mental health and dehumanization that we see in these younger generations, that they’re standard deviation, in many cases, worse at social skills. And this is really concerning on some short- and medium-term horizon. I don’t actually worry about it on a long-term horizon because we tend as humans to figure these things out. But the negative externalities of AI are going to play out. And the question is simply, how quickly can we react to them and make sure that they don’t affect multiple generations?

Can We Combat Identity Displacement and Idiocracy?

Hampton: And have you seen any sort of solutions where we could course-correct quickly with these two problems?

Kass: Yeah, on identity displacement, we haven’t even begun to understand what this might do to the population. And I think the closest comp that you can get to this is probably studying the Luddites, who are a class of people shortly after the first industrial revolution, who decided that the effect of the industrial revolution wasn’t actually an economic burden, it was a societal burden. And they basically destroyed factories. They did everything they could to slow technological progress. And this is going to happen, I think, in droves, in a whole new way, because many people do not know how to extricate their sense of self from their work. And we’ve already observed this with Hollywood strikes, right? A class of people, quite honestly, that I don’t actually think are immediately in danger of losing any sense of professional identity have already stood up and said, “You cannot take away our inalienable right to be actors.”

And their concern is not an economic one. What they are not saying is “we won’t be able to work.” What they are saying is “we deserve a right to be actors.” And I think the problem herein is that we don’t yet appreciate how many of our jobs are going to change and how frequently they’re going to change. And in order to evolve as a society, we may have to be willing, all of us, you, me, everyone, may have to be willing to say, I’m OK economically, therefore, I’m OK emotionally. And I stand by this because I really think AI is going to accelerate the humanistic elements of society. I think we are all eventually going to become much more human in this process. We’re going to reduce the amount of computational work in our lives. And again, we can talk more about that in a second. But I don’t think we actually know yet how to solve for this identity displacement crisis that we’re facing. The best advice I can give to anyone is start considering how important your friends and family are to your happiness. Start considering all of the things in your life that make you, you, that make you happy instead of your work. Because it may be very soon that you can no longer actually attach your happiness or your sense of self to your job. ...

Hampton: ... That could be seen as a way to encourage people to ease their concerns about how AI will come into their workplace, right?

Kass: Certainly. I think, you know, when you ask people how much of their job do they like, and this is true for everyone, it’s less than 50%. You know, up and down socioeconomic chain, anywhere in business, it’s because we have so much computational cruft embedded into our lives. Right? What makes your job exciting is these moments on camera with me. And there’s so much that goes into your job that no one gets to see that honestly can feel like a burden, I’m sure. I certainly feel the same way. I think we’re going to get rid of most of that work and actually end up enjoying the parts of our job that AI cannot do that we actually take the most pleasure in. It doesn’t mean, though, that many jobs won’t change a lot. And the sooner people start to appreciate that their work will get better and more productive, even if it changes, I think the better we’ll be.

Why People Should Trust That AI Technology Will Be Used to Serve Humanity

Hampton: And well, AI technology promises to permeate nearly every aspect of life, which many can find threatening. Why should people trust the relative few who control this powerful technology to use it to serve all of humanity?

Kass: This one I love to answer because, you know, I’m basically a small-business owner now. And I am a writer, I’m an adjunct professor, I’m a keynote speaker, I’m a boardroom advisor, and I do some research on the side. I would not be able to do these things. And by the way, there are plenty of people in my life who have encouraged me to do a little less but notwithstanding the reasonable advice from friends and family, I would not be able to do any of these things were it not for the support of AI. And there are so many things in my life that have become simpler and easier because of things like the ZackGPT that I use that plugs into my email and helps me draft responses to the 200 emails I get a day. Helps me as a research assistant, helps me as a ghost writer.is actually ultimately that the research may commoditize, that the frontier model may not actually be the thing that wins the prize. And I’ll talk more about that in a second. But ultimately, my position here is that I think AI utilitizes, that it actually becomes a commodity in many cases, and looks more like the internet or the electrical grid than it does the cloud. And so I don’t actually tell people that you should put all your trust and faith into a single company because I don’t think you actually have to anymore. What I think you have to do is challenge yourselves and the institutions around you to adopt this technology comfortably so that it can start to do things like make major scientific breakthroughs, improve worker productivity and job satisfaction.

How Zack Kass Uses AI to Live a More Human Experience

Hampton: Zack, can you describe how you have used AI to live a more human experience?

Kass: This one I love to answer because, you know, I’m basically a small-business owner now. And I am a writer, I’m an adjunct professor, I’m a keynote speaker, I’m a boardroom advisor, and I do some research on the side. I would not be able to do these things. And by the way, there are plenty of people in my life who have encouraged me to do a little less, but notwithstanding the reasonable advice from friends and family, I would not be able to do any of these things were it not for the support of AI. And there are so many things in my life that have become simpler and easier because of things like the ZackGPT that I use that plugs into my email and helps me draft responses to the 200 emails I get a day. Helps me as a research assistant, helps me as a ghost writer.

Hampton: Well, Zack, you can add me to the list of people who think you have a lot of jobs. Thank you for this great conversation. I will see you at the Morningstar Investment Conference in June.

Kass: Can’t wait. Thanks so much for having me.

Watch more from the Morningstar Investment Conference 2024 here.