OpenAI's economics team: 'We don't have the nouns yet' for the jobs AI will create
paulnovosad · x · 2026-09-23
In a new Substack post, OpenAI's Economic Research team argues the AI-and-jobs debate over-focuses on existing occupations while systematically underestimating future ones, because we lack the vocabulary for jobs built on technologies and business models that don't exist yet. Examples: explaining 'optimizing search ads for a cloud-hosted video app' to someone in 1976 was impossible; research by Autor et al. finds most 2018 US employment was in job specialties absent from the 1940 Census; cybersecurity is a concrete example of an unforeseen job category. The post urges balancing displacement fears with hard-to-predict new opportunities.
More from AGI Musings
- New PNAS paper: human learning is an understudied lever for boosting human–AI synergy — iyadrahwan · 2026-09-23
- Ben Thompson: consumer AI has a marketing problem — people want entertainment, not productivity — _AustinCalvert_ · 2026-09-23
- Brian Chau on podcast: AI doom and America's cultural pessimism — mimi10v3 · 2026-09-23
- Domingos: the safest job from AI is one OpenAI thinks won't help recursive self-improvement — pmddomingos · 2026-09-23
- Early LLM psychosis cases showed overt narcissism far above baseline, observer claims — repligate · 2026-09-23
- Robotics researcher calls IROS paper quality 'peak enshittification of academia' — siddhss5 · 2026-09-23