How AI is changing the office

The next big thing doesn't always turn out that way. There was a spasmodic moment in the early 2020s when the metaverse was going to be the future.

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A McKinsey report published in 2022 reckoned that it could generate up to $5trn of value by 2030. Meta got its new name. Some people were appointed chief metaverse officers. A few of them may still be out there, banging on about non-fungible tokens and how Barbados has an embassy in Decentraland. Everyone else has moved on.

Generative AI is plainly not the metaverse. It may end up falling short of the headiest expectations. Its full impact will become clear only over a long period of time. Many firms say they are disillusioned with their returns to date. But the office is already a different place because of the technology.

The evidence for that is partly quantitative. Employees are often adopting the technology unilaterally, working out for themselves how best to use it. Some are doing so surreptitiously, uncertain whether they will get credit or replaced. But the firms behind the frontier models can see what's happening.