Rapid reductions in the time taken by AI tools to complete some tasks mean a transition to advanced AI is in sight, OpenAI said in its Industrial Policy for the Intelligence Age report.
“If progress continues, we can expect systems to be capable of carrying out projects that currently take people months,” it added.
“This shift will reshape how organisations run, how knowledge is created, and how people find meaning and opportunity.”
The company said to plan for this, firms should be incentivised to find “durable improvements in workers’ benefits” – such as by piloting four-day work weeks with no loss in pay.
Businesses could also increase retirement contributions, cover more healthcare costs and subsidise childcare, OpenAI said.
According to Prof Gina Neff, of the University of Cambridge’s Minderoo Centre for Technology and Democracy, the idea of paying workers for efficiency gains from revolutionary tech is not new.
But “the difference now is that OpenAI wants other companies to pay workers more while also paying them for subscriptions to their services,” she told BBC News.
“The ideas in this policy report might work, but doing so will take a complete change in the political headwinds to shift the balance between labour and capital like OpenAI is asking for,” Neff added.
It comes after warnings that the rise of increasingly capable AI tools could displace people from jobs.
Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey said in December such displacement could mirror that seen during the Industrial Revolution.
However, others have said the impact of AI may be felt much later than tech firms predict.
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