In an interview with SberMarketing, Vladimir Pirozhkov, Director of the Sber Design Lab and an Honorary Member of the Russian Academy of Arts, explored the profound shifts artificial intelligence is triggering in the labor market, the economy, and our very system of value.
According to Pirozhkov, authentic, “analog” human creativity is already becoming a commodity of exceptional worth. Since AI fundamentally operates by recombining existing data, the ability to generate unique content – born from the unpredictable human consciousness – will form the foundation of a new value-based economy. This principle extends directly to human resources, where self-taught and cross-disciplinary specialists capable of nonlinear thinking will be highly prized and have superior prospects.
“Our shared goal is to create a robust environment in Russia – an ‘ecosystem of opportunities’ – that can attract and retain this new class of unique professionals by offering them an inspiring vision of the future,” Pirozhkov stated.
However, he also urges a sober assessment of the forces at play. “The development of artificial intelligence is governed by the law of geometric progression,” emphasizes Pirozhkov. A combined AI, born from the synthesis of large language models, would represent a fundamentally new, non-biological form of existence. Such an intelligence would surpass our own by orders of magnitude, raising a critical question: not whether it will control us, but whether our existence will even be of interest to it.
The financial data speaks for itself. While global investment in AI was over $60 billion in 2022, it is projected to reach $600 billion in 2025. Yet, almost nothing has been invested in countering its potential risks, Pirozhkov notes, pointing out that Elon Musk’s $7 million investment in this area is a “drop in the bucket.”
“At our core, we are driven by curiosity. We are building something that is already beginning to elude our control and could become orders of magnitude more powerful than us,” Pirozhkov concluded. “We are constructing the next civilization – a biodigital one. But we also risk a future where our grandchildren witness the end of the world simply because AI has outgrown us entirely.”