At OpenAI, understanding AI’s impact on jobs is a job in itself.
Employees on the company’s economic research team are tasked with studying how the technology is affecting workers, businesses, institutions, and the broader economy.
The ChatGPT maker’s chief economist, Ronnie Chatterji, says thriving in these roles takes a particular mix of skills and mindsets because AI’s rapid evolution can quickly send the work in new directions.
For example, recursive self-improvement — the ability for AI systems to improve themselves — wasn’t on Chatterji’s radar a year ago but is now a topic his team is studying.
“The job description is changing a lot,” he…
