Replay: Learn how AI is reshaping the economy—and why its true impact goes beyond traditional metrics. Earlier this year, the OpenAI Forum hosted a fireside chat featuring Kevin Weil, Chief Product Officer at OpenAI, and Erik Brynjolfsson, Stanford professor and digital economy expert. They explored how AI differs from past technological revolutions, why its benefits often escape traditional economic measurements, and how businesses can integrate AI to augment—not replace—human workers.

The evolving landscape of AI is marked by increasing generality, scalability, and advanced reasoning capabilities—trends exemplified by OpenAI’s "O series" models, which demonstrate the potential for AI to "think" before responding. In remarks by Noam Brown, Researcher at OpenAI, the discussion highlighted two key AI paradigms—pre-training and reasoning—and how models improve as they process more data and compute. These technical advances are not only accelerating model performance but also reshaping the strategic and economic dynamics of AI infrastructure. Complementing this, discussions led by OpenAI’s Chief Economist Ronnie Chatterji and Forum members explored how AI intersects with geopolitics, national security, and economic policy. They examined the balance between democratic and autocratic approaches to AI development, the implications for global alliances, and how AI infrastructure investments influence both economic and military strategy. Together, these conversations underscore the dual trajectory of AI: accelerating technical progress and deepening its role in global policy, infrastructure, and institutional governance.

About the Talk: Much of the value of labor in industrialized economies derives from the scarcity of expertise rather than from the scarcity of labor per se. In economic parlance, expertise denotes a specific body of knowledge or competency required for accomplishing a particular objective. Human expertise commands a market premium to the degree that it is, first, necessary for accomplishing valuable objectives, and second, scarce, meaning not possessed by most people. Will  AI increase the value of expertise by broadening its relevance and applicability? Or will it instead commodify expertise and undermine pay, even if jobs are not lost in net. Autor will present a simple framework for interpreting the relationship between technological change and expertise across three different technological revolutions. He will argue that, due to AI’s malleability and broad applicability, its labor market consequences will depend fundamentally on how firms, governments, NGOs, and universities (among others) invest to develop its capabilities and shape its applications.  

We’re grateful to those of you who took part in our first-in-a-series event to help build understanding of how artificial intelligence is an inherently productivity-driving innovation that can drive significant economic growth, and what policies we should put in place to help the country realize that growth and ensure that all Americans have the freedom and opportunity to benefit from this prosperity. As promised, we’re sharing insights and takeaways from the discussions – including sample output from our technical demonstration of how our new Deep Research tool helped a Wisconsin small business owner quickly plan to expand to other states.

The Blueprint outlines policy proposals for how the US can maximize AI’s benefits, bolster national security, and drive economic growth.