AI looks poised to disrupt all manner of jobs, but some people might find that their skills might become valuable in the AI era.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said that “idea guys” will finally come into their own in the AI era. “We (the whole industry, not just OpenAI) are building a brain for the world,” Altman wrote in a blogpost. “It will be extremely personalized and easy for everyone to use; we will be limited by good ideas. For a long time, technical people in the startup industry have made fun of “the idea guys”; people who had an idea and were looking for a team to build it. It now looks to me like they are about to have their day in the sun,” he added.
Altman implied that given how intelligence — through the proliferation of AI models — would become commonplace and cheap, what would become more valuable is ideas on what to do with that intelligence. This is where “idea guys” — people who thus far had creative ideas, but didn’t necessarily have the technical skills to implement them — would come in. These people would be able to use AI to bring their ideas to life, and build new products and services.
Other people have made similar arguments. Zerodha co-founder Nikhil Kamath has said that he expects creative people to be more valuable in the AI era. ““By creativity, I mean the very contrarian nature of creativity. I believe something is creative when you do something that is not following the trend. Any model will eventually either predict random or trend, not necessarily counter-trend. And most innovation generally comes from counter-trend thinking. So, creative people will become a lot more valuable,” he had said.
But the time during which “idea guys” might be valuable might not last for very long. If AI can have abundant intelligence, it might not be long before it can come up with novel ideas too. But until then, idea guys, who were struggling to see their ideas and startups come to life, might find that AI could end up creating much of what they’d been dreaming up in their heads.