“Digital labor” was once synonymous with the gig economy. If your work was done online or assigned by a central platform in the cloud, you were part of the movement. I’ve been living like this for almost 20 years now. A popular example of this digital labor approach is Uber. (New York Stock Exchange: Uber) Rideshare services and Fiverr International (NYSE:FVRR) Gig connection service for digital freelancers.
But the word has taken on new life in the last two years. When the ChatGPT artificial intelligence (AI) platform emerged, some called it “digital labor” to generate effective human-written prompts to feed into AI systems. And now the AI revolution is taking the next logical step. In 2025, digital labor will often refer to automated AI agents that can set their own tasks and plan complex data management activities.
This form of digital labor helps people achieve more with less work. Critics argue that this is a slippery slope that could lead to self-aware AI systems with potentially dangerous priorities. Is digital labor the first step to a better future, or will Skynet from the Terminator movie series come next?
First of all, the AI industry is far from self-aware machines. ChatGPT can be great at summarizing long texts, and its sister service Dall-E 3 typically places a good number of fingers on people in the generated images, but only up to a point.
In 2025, even the best image generators often get basic details wrong.
I’ve seen tons of AI-generated text created by the best large-scale language models (LLMs) with professionally crafted prompts and very specific, high-quality data. . The results are still repetitive, clunky, and full of inaccurate analysis.
Tech giants like Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:Google) and tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) We have been working on the development of self-driving cars for many years. Although these systems are constantly being improved, truly self-driving cars are not yet a reality. Experts in the field believe self-driving cars will be safe and convenient by the mid-2030s.
I just started playing a game of chess with the latest version of Alphabet’s Gemini LLM. The AI’s second move broke the rules for how knights should move. The multifunctional LLM is not yet ready to play a proper game of chess.
The grand ambition of building artificial general intelligence (AGI) is also far away. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman now predicts that computers will match human creativity by the 2030s, but experts have been overly optimistic about the long-term goal. where is my flying car?
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Quantum computing has the potential to accelerate this progress, as non-binary computation allows us to find patterns in life’s noisy data much faster than old-school computers. But we need extremely powerful quantum computers to make meaningful contributions in areas like AGI, human-like creativity, and robots that can act like normal humans. McKinsey researchers expect to have thousands of usable quantum computers by 2030, but truly complex problems will not be reached until 2035 or 2040.
That means the world has about a decade left to make an avalanche of revolutionary breakthroughs in the field of AI and quantum computing. While I look forward to big changes in human progress, I can only hope that new systems are developed with long-term safety in mind. Until then, Isaac Asimov’s Three Laws of Robotics should be read every day in every college and high school.
But progress will be made, and it is happening right now.
AI hardware expert Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) and advanced microdevices (NASDAQ:AMD) We’re already developing next-generation AI accelerator chips that can run around what OpenAI used to train ChatGPT 3 and 4. Every tech giant worth the name is working on developing better AI software and services.
Nvidia’s performance is soaring because the planet is full of ambitious entrepreneurs pushing the limits of current technology in search of what’s next.
Digital labor is a key piece of this puzzle. The more you automate your AI training and development efforts, the faster you’ll see real progress. AI agents can help you do that. Their history has always been a balancing act on the line between high-speed automation and high-quality results. Mistakes will be made and setbacks will occur, but overall progress continues.
If you’ve been following the ChatGPT-inspired generative AI boom, you’ll be familiar with many of the key names in the AI version of digital labor.
OpenAI is an early leader in AutoGPT, an LLM that can generate complex query plans to tackle difficult research questions. Alphabet is incorporating an experimental form of the same approach into its latest Gemini model. UiPath (NYSE:Pass) has always aimed to automate digital business processes with AI assistance. AI agents have just taken this idea to the next level.
The list goes on and will surely expand in 2025.
Now you know what digital labor and AI agents are. These ideas should be safe and useful for at least the next decade, and very smart people will set up safeguards against potential threats (with the help of AI agents) along the way. And you can invest in many major companies right now.
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Alphabet executive Suzanne Frye is a member of The Motley Fool’s board of directors. Anders Bylund has held positions at Alphabet, Fiverr International, and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices, Alphabet, Fiverr International, Nvidia, Tesla, Uber Technologies, and UiPath. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The next stage of the artificial intelligence (AI) revolution has arrived — Say hello to the digital workforce originally published by The Motley Fool
