The future of the firm

Authors’ note: This is the second essay in our series on the next economy, part of a new platform to host independent voices exploring an AGI future. It reflects our views, not those of OpenAI or our colleagues.

The two of us were twenty-four when we started managing our own teams here at OpenAI. That is less impressive once you meet our teams.

We’re supposed to be grunts. At twenty-four, you’re at the bottom of the corporate ladder. You take the meeting notes and write a few memos. After years of drudgerous work, you are (hopefully) granted a broader remit.

Our path—and the path of many young people today—is looking different. We enter the workforce already with “employees” at our behest. These deputies work day and night, weekends and holidays. They are great at the grunt work. We even have math olympiad gold medalists on staff to advise us. Our new reports still make their share of mistakes. But they are getting better, learning our needs, and we are learning how to manage them.

Neither of us climbed the corporate ladder. Management has instead come down to our rung. This essay is about our promotion, and the other ways firms might reorganize as we enter the intelligence age.

When AI enters the firm, where does it go? We present three illustrative scenarios:

Beneath us. Everyone keeps their seat, and a new basement of AI labor grows underneath. We all become managers. First we get assistants, then chiefs of staff, and eventually entire miniature firms reporting up to each of us. Every person gets a promotion.

Beside us. AI joins the org chart alongside people as a colleague of sorts, working directly for existing human managers and executives. It starts out by taking up this task and that role. In time, it performs broader functions, reporting higher up the flagpole.

None of these scenarios will play out exactly as we describe, but we think aspects of all three will come true. All three are already happening in subtle ways.