[!info] AI-Written TL;DR
- AI shines in daily life—drafts docs, cooks up recipes, plans projects—but hasn’t boosted most jobs yet.
- Public opinion splits: alarmists predict job shake-ups; skeptics shrug it off as another Bay-Area fad.
- I’m with the alarmists: massive funding and talent say big change is coming within five years.
- Even without fresh breakthroughs, scaling today’s models will reshape workflows and markets.
- Few are studying real-world use cases; 98 % of resources chase ever-bigger models instead.
- Waiting for clarity is risky—by the time the dust settles, unprepared teams may be left behind.
- My plan: read widely, share ideas openly, and prototype new AI tools for mental-health research.
- If this rings true for you, follow along or drop me a note.
AI is everywhere. You don’t have to rely on metrics from tech giants (OpenAI usage 3x, Gemini usage 10x in 1 year, etc.). You can see it all around you. It can prepare a detailed report within minutes. It can draft a perfect legal reply and help you file it. It can take your ingredients and suggest a tasty drink or a meal. It can help you plan your next project. All you have to do is ask — even a half-formed, hazy question. AI’s reach in our personal lives is undeniable.
But what about our work? When it comes to work-related productivity growth, there are not many signs of change. We don’t see major workflow changes. We don’t see any revenue boost (aside from tech giants). We don’t see any AI-driven mass layoffs. So, does it mean AI is mainly a consumer product as we have seen so far, or is it going to have the same dramatic impact on our work as well?
How Big Will it Get?
There are two extreme views on the impact of AI on the economy.
On one hand, alarmists like Dario Amodei believe “AI could wipe out half of all entry‑level white‑collar jobs — and spike unemployment to 10–20 percent in the next one to five years”. Even in tech, where the tides of AI automation will reach first, it’s hard to see how some of these predictions are going to materialize in such a short time-frame!
On the other end of the spectrum, you find skeptics who consider this mainly as a fad. These people were amazed when they first used ChatGPT. But very soon it became another app on their phone that gives better results than Google Search. It’s just another tech from the Bay Area where everything is expected to change the world.
Most people land somewhere in the middle, likely closer to the skeptic side. It’s not that people are actively underestimating the AI’s impact; it’s just easy to ignore the headlines amongst everything else. Factors like the dizzying speed of innovation in AI, or even the confusing naming of AI products (3o is newer than o4?) make staying up-to-date a real challenge. Even if you manage tox stay up-to-date, it won’t be clear exactly how this tech can impact your work, and how you should prepare for it. This ambiguity is not limited to people outside of tech. Even within tech teams, there is no consensus on the impact and usability of AI.
Bigger than Most People Think
I lean towards the alarmists. I believe the impact of AI will be substantial and will be felt across the economy within the next five years. It’s not that many jobs will be totally eliminated, but staff will be replaced by those who can use AI effectively.
There are two reasons behind my conviction: First, the amount of investment and talent going into AI is unprecedented. It’s not just money. Many smart people I know passionately work to make AI better (sometimes in stressful work settings). And if moon-landing in the 60s proved anything, you can get to the moon even before having a functioning phone network, if that’s the goal. And right now, AI is the goal.
But even if there is no new discovery in AI anymore, just scaling the existing models, fine-tuning them, and deploying them to different sectors can reshape our work and the economy substantially.
Getting Ready
So, how will AI change our work exactly, and how should we prepare for it?
I don’t think anyone really knows the answer. So far, we have learned to build a model and have a rough idea of how it works. But we have no idea how it is going to impact different domains, or how it can be best used in our work.
And not many people are thinking about this either. Almost all money and talent allocated to AI goes to making more powerful models across all modalities (~98% of the budget). Even safety and alignment, which make sure these models don’t cause any harm to humans, don’t get much attention (less than 2% of the budget). Figuring out the applications of the models in other sectors is not even on the priority list!
So for us outsiders, we need to wait for the AI race to slow down before the changes hit our work. But by then it might be very late to prepare or adapt, and we risk becoming irrelevant by sticking to the status quo.
I’ve been working at the intersection of technology and mental-health research for most of my life, and I’m familiar with both domains. Over the past two years, I’ve also followed AI development closely - not just reading the news, but very much hands-on development to understand how AI models work under the hood. Yet, the more I read, the less I see written on this key question: How will AI change research in psychology and mental health?
My goal is to systematically find the answer and document it. Part of this is to learn how AI will inevitably impact behavioural research, and partly to develop tools and systems that guide this impact. Toward this goal, I will iteratively go through three steps:
- Literature review: I continuously read new materials on this topic and reach out to thought leaders for their perspectives.
- Ideation: I share my thoughts here as blog posts. Aside from organizing my thinking, this writing gives me a chance to get feedback from fellow researchers.
- Prototyping: I’m lucky to work with a talented team of engineers in Avicenna. Together, we will prototype the most promising ideas in real-world studies.
So if what I wrote about resonates with you, either follow our journey here or send an email and share your thoughts. I’m excited to hear from you.