Finance & economics | Ascension, for some

How AI will divide the best from the rest

Optimists hope the technology will be a great equaliser. Instead, it looks likely to widen social divides

A man in a suit going up an escalator made of glowing mesh material. It represents AI in the workforce. Two workers, on in a suit and one in a blue overall are at the bottom of the escalator, unable to take it to go up.
Illustration: Ricardo Rey
|Washington, DC|7 min read

At a summit in Paris on February 10th and 11th, tech bosses vied to issue the most grandiose claim about artificial intelligence. “AI will be the most profound shift of our lifetimes,” is how Sundar Pichai, Alphabet’s boss, put it. Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, said that it would lead to the “largest change to the global labour market in human history”. In a blog post, Sam Altman of OpenAI wrote that “In a decade perhaps everyone on earth will be capable of accomplishing more than the most impactful person can today.”

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This article appeared in the Finance & economics section of the print edition under the headline “Ascension, for some”

From the February 15th 2025 edition

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