Ethan Mollick speaks "to a lot of people in industry, academia, and government, and I have noticed a strange blind spot. Despite planning horizons that often stretch a decade or more, very few organizations are seriously accounting for the possibility of continued AI improvement in their strategic planning."

"In some ways, this makes complete sense because nobody knows the future of AI. But organizations and individuals often plan for multiple futures -- possible recessions, electoral outcomes, even natural disasters. Why does planning for the future of AI seem different?"

"Doing nothing has a number of issues. First, it ignores the very real fact that we do not need any further advances in AI technology to see years of future disruption. Right now, AI systems are not well-integrated into businesses and organizations, something that will continue to improve even if LLM technology stops developing."

"A second factor that gets overlooked in discussions is that Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) serves as a motivating goal for an entire industry. Even if the AI labs are wrong about the particular future they are working towards, advances in technologies can become a self-fulfilling prophecy."

Confronting impossible futures

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