How will artificial intelligence change the economy? Will it wipe out traditionally human occupations? Or will it end up creating more jobs for people in the long run? George Gilder, co-founder of Discovery Institute and author of the new book Gaming AI: Why AI Can’t Think but Can Transform Jobs, thinks that AI has the potential to drastically enhance human life. His optimistic view on AI focuses more on job creation over the long term, while he firmly recognizes that AI will never become so humanlike that it will replace us. He particularly thinks AI will be able to perform the jobs that most people would prefer to avoid. Vish Gain wrote a piece on Gilder’s views in the Silicon Republic, quoting from Gilder,

We don’t like physical, manual jobs all that much. Most people feel oppressed by the requirement to constantly be performing physical, manual jobs that could be more efficiently performed by a robot.

-Vish Gain, ‘AI will increase productivity with more entrepreneurs and fewer workers’ (siliconrepublic.com)

Gilder said that just because technology can accomplish an array of tasks doesn’t necessarily mean that there will be less to do for humans. Instead, it could open the door to more entrepreneurial activity. Gilder continued,

There are more and more companies performing more and more functions with fewer and fewer people. That’s an enhancement of human liberty. There’s more entrepreneurs and fewer workers, which is really the history of increased human productivity.

With AI such a hot topic at the moment, given the rise of programs like ChatGPT and the feverish arms race among Big Tech giants to incorporate the technology into their platforms, Gilder offers an alternative perspective on the hype.