Why would this be scary? You've upgraded the productivity of maybe hundreds of millions of people.
Elaborating further on the idea of productivity, as I said above, this doesn’t make employees more productive. It is doing some of the producing. It is not like an improved tool, where someone has to operate it to reap the benefits. It “upgrades productivity” more like how a kiosk at a McDonald’s upgrades productivity - not of the worker, but of the business. And much like the kiosks, we would be naive to believe they won’t replace the humans in due time.
This also has larger consequences for knowledge workers. Previously, to attain a higher level of productivity out of a worker, companies would have to invest in them so they could develop the necessary skills. Gone (or at least lessened) is that need. So workers will have less skill, less job freedom, a smaller share of profit, less social mobility. This is a nightmare for the working class.
Absolutely no one is spending tens of millions of dollars developing these tools in order to let random plebs capture much of the value produced by them.
This coming century is supposed to be about 'Rest of World' - first China, then India and the rest.
But it's going to risk the ability of the nearly-unskilled labour to help.
They can learn new things and cover over the things they do now know. Hopefully they can join the Developed World quickly.
Every time someone says X is going to suffer under ChatGPT, I remind that person that X will also improve their productivity by using ChatGPT.
ChatGPT is the most amazing personal tutor I can find. I'm adding 1 IT cert per month, largely due to ChatGPT's help as my personal tutor.
Do you know what happened to manufacturing when automation low-cost outsourcing happened?
It was wiped out.
It was devastating for certain sectors of the economy, even as 'net productivity rose' - the surpluses were acquired by some, not others.
A lot of 'ghettos' in the US are a direct result of mass factory closures.
Now - imagine that happening over the developing world, or rather, factories that were supposed to open, never did.
The developing world are 'services export' economy, with things like call centres etc. - and AI will more likely than not just evaporate those roles.
That those people will have 'access to ChatGPT' is besides the point when most of them don't even have computers (just mobile phones), or any way to apply that knowledge.
It's a bit like saying: 'The developing world has access to Wikipedia and all of Harvard courses online! They should all have great jobs!'
Unfortunately that's not how it works.
AI is going to help white collar workers, not pink or blue collar work which is low-skilled.