The future of work just got a significant boost with the latest advancements in artificial intelligence (AI). Over the past few weeks, top AI firms like OpenAI, Google, and Amazon have unveiled products capable of completing tasks independently, marking a major leap towards automation. These new tools can reason like humans, act as agents, and perform complex work from start to finish.
While humans will still guide these models, they are designed to assist fewer people in doing the work of many. Recent examples include Anthropic’s Claude Code, which can write and deploy code at speeds 10 times faster than humans, and Google’s “workhorse model,” which gathers and synthesizes large amounts of information quickly.
AI companies have long warned that their products will automate major projects, displacing jobs and potentially entire industries. Sam Altman, co-founder of OpenAI, has repeatedly sounded the alarm, stating in 2016 that new economic models like universal basic income might be necessary to address job displacement. His warnings have continued since then, including a 2023 warning that “jobs are definitely going to go away.”
Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2025/03/generative-ai-agents/682050