Nathaniel Whittemore

Christy Hoffman, the general secretary of the 20-million-member strong Uni Global Union, said AI is being sold as a productivity tool, which often means doing more with fewer workers.

International Monetary Fund Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva called AI a tsunami hitting the labor market, with the potential to transform or eliminate 60% of jobs in advanced economies and 40% globally.

Now, I remember a study from a couple of years ago from one of the big global institutions, IMF or World Bank or one of them, that basically had those numbers, so I assume that's what she's talking about.

Providing some bright spot, she thought that as high-skilled workers see their wages rise because of AI, they would likely consume more in ways that benefited the local service economy.

She said one in ten jobs is already enhanced by AI, and the people in these jobs are paid better.

When they're paid better, they spend more money in the local economy.

They spend more money in restaurants, here or there.

Demand for low-skilled jobs goes up, and actually total employment seems to slightly increase because of it.

Now, for those who might be skeptical of this or seem like it feels relatively Pollyannish, there have been studies that have shown that, for example, in San Francisco, for each new local tech job, 4.4 jobs for positions like retail clerks, cooks, teachers, and dentists is also created.

At the same time, the IMF still has some big concerns.

The two that stood out is stagnating middle-class wages, especially for jobs that are not enhanced by AI, and increasing barriers to youth employment as AI takes over the entry-level tasks.

Now, behind the scenes in Davos, there was also a lot of jockeying for position.

The information wrote a piece all about how some Davos meetings were part of what seems to be a larger strategy for OpenAI to get more aggressive about its enterprise recruitment.

Now, this effort was not strictly restricted to Davos.

In fact, last week in San Francisco, Sam Altman hosted an extended business dinner with Disney CEO Bob Iger and other corporate execs.

The information writes that the gathering was intended to preview a new OpenAI offering aimed at large companies, but they could not determine what that offering was.

All that was happening while OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap and new Chief Revenue Officer Denise Dresser were schmoozing over in Davos.

Clearly, the company is trying to message that they are, in fact, not behind when it comes to enterprise.

In a Davos session, OpenAI CFO Sarah Fryer said that by the end of the year, approximately 50% of their business will come from enterprise customers.

And Sam Altman tweeted that they had added more than a billion in ARR over the last month just from their API business.