Generative AI has already changed how several white-collar jobs operate — tools like Cursor are redefining coding, and LLMs are being used in everything from consulting to law — but things might be about to get stranger still.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai has said that in the not too distant future, intelligence will become abundant like air, and will be essentially free for all. “We’re already seeing costs (of intelligence) coming down,” he said at a Carnegie Mellon University event. “So if you look at the cost per token of our flagship models over the last 18 months, what used to cost $4 per million tokens now costs us just 13 cents. This trend is going to continue. You’re going to have intelligence too, just like air, too cheap to meter,” he added.
Pichai shared a graph showing the costs of Google Models over time. In February 2023, Google’s state-of-the-art Palm Model cost $4 to generate a million tokens. In contrast, its latest model — which is exponentially more capable than Palm — costs just $0.13 to generate a million tokens. Pichai expects this increase in quality coupled with a fall in prices to continue, which would mean that “intelligence” — as provided by modern LLMs — would be essentially free.
Pichai dubbed this as a platform shift. “When you look back, major platform shifts have two things in common. They have an underlying step change in technological advancement. Some combination of computing power, connectivity and user interface that fundamentally resets how everything is done, and a creation of a new ecosystem that helps people and organizations succeed on a larger scale,” he said.
“Let’s take them one at a time. First, a step change in tech advancement. The combination of deep neural nets, transformer architecture, advanced compute. We’re scaling up compute like never before. And with Internet scale data, all have come together to deliver foundation models that you all use every day. For AI to be a platform shift, we and others have to make these models accessible so others can drive innovation on top of it,” hadded.
“And it needs the creation of a vibrant new ecosystem. Today, there’s a flourishing of tools, infrastructure and innovations driven by many companies, startups and developers. At Google, we are opening access to world class tooling and infrastructure. And today, more than 2 million developers are building with our AI models,” he continued.
These changes could dramatically alter the jobs landscape in the coming years. LLMs can already code better than the average developer, and will soon be able to give better diagnoses and advice than the average doctors and engineers. As such, most white-collar workers will begin relying on LLMs at their daily jobs. This will change the nature of their work — their work could end up being correcting or overseeing the work that computers do, as opposed to doing it all themselves. Also, given how each white-collar worker will be able to be exponentially more productive because of the help provided by LLMs, it could result in job losses in the short term.
But humanity has a funny way to find new roles to replace the ones that have been made redundant by technology. There were no content creators and influencers until a decade ago, and white-collar workers will likely eventually find other roles that’ll give them both emotional fulfilment and a stable income. These are exciting times, and intelligence becoming free could end up being one of the most consequential milestones in the history of human civilization.