Under this premise, you can see our first public research agenda on these topics⁠(opens in a new window). This describes our preliminary priorities for research on the economic impacts of large language models broadly. We are excited to complement this research agenda with concrete action to facilitate improved measurement of the economic impacts of our models. We are launching a call for expressions of interest from researchers interested in studying the economic impacts of Codex and our other large language model releases like GPT‑3, ChatGPT, and DALL-E 2 and a portal for customers to submit interest in supporting this work. You can find more information on both below.

As an AI research and deployment company, OpenAI recognizes that our decisions around AI system design and deployment can influence economic impacts and the distribution of economic benefits from advances in AI. Despite remarkable technological progress over the past several decades, gains in economic prosperity have not been widely distributed. In the US, trends in both income and wealth inequality over the last forty years demonstrate a worrying pace of economic divergence and uneven access to opportunity.1 While recent evidence suggests that there is little immediate risk of widespread technological unemployment due to AI, it is clear that the labor market impacts of increasingly advanced AI will vary widely across different types of workers.2 Unemployment shocks, even if transitory, have been shown to have widespread negative effects on individual wellbeing,3 and increasing economic inequality may amplify societal cleavages.4

We are eager to support and conduct research that has the potential to impact decision-making on three axes:

We need to engage in research about the economic impact of our models today in order to be positioned to assess the safety of developing and releasing more capable systems in the future. Our recent model releases such as Codex, DALL·E 2, and ChatGPT provide tractable opportunities to establish the foundation for this research going forward.