Speaking at
Fortune's Innovation Forum in Hong Kong Thursday, former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers said that the full potential of AI won't be here for a couple of years. Summers joined the board last year after CEO Sam Altman's sudden firing and re-hiring.
Summers likened AI to self-driving cars, a sector that has been in development for years, saying that despite all the efforts to build autonomous vehicles, truck drivers have yet to lose their jobs. Still, he thinks that the full potential of AI will inevitably come, eventually.
“If one takes a view over the next generation, this could be the biggest thing that has happened in economic history since the Industrial Revolution,” he said. “This offers the prospect of not replacing some forms of human labor, but almost all forms of human labor.”
Summers said that AI will eventually be able to do just about every type of human job, specifically impacting "cognitive labor," something that he said will make emotional intelligence important in this new age of pending joblessness.
“AI will substitute for a doctor making a difficult diagnosis … before it substitutes for a nurse’s ability to hold a patient’s hand when the patient is frightened,” he said.
