AI will eventually free people up to 'work when they want to,' ChatGPT investor predicts

• The future of AI could "free humanity" from work, according to OpenAI investor Vinod Khosla.
• The venture capitalist predicted that 80% of jobs could be completed by AI in 25 years.

The future of artificial intelligence could "free humanity from the need to work," according to Vinod Khosla, the cofounder of Sun Microsystems and an early investor in ChatGPT creator OpenAI. But it's a future that Khosla warns won't come without major disruption or global competition.

In an interview with Semafor, the venture capitalist predicted that 80% of jobs could be completed by AI in 25 years.

"This large transformation is the opportunity to free humanity from the need to work. People will work when they want to work on what they want to work on," Khosla told Semafor.

Khosla is the founder of VC firm Khosla Ventures, which has invested in companies including DoorDash, Instacart, Impossible Foods, Wattpad, and more. Back in 2014, Khosla told Semafor, he started thinking about a future with AI, even predicting that eventually most media would be created by AI in the future and that AI will disrupt teaching.

Still, any transition to offloading most jobs to AI won't be seamless, Khosla said.

"That's a utopian vision. But getting from here to that utopia is really disruptive and it is terrible to be the disrupted one," he said. "So you have to have empathy for whoever's being disrupted. And the transition is very messy. It hurts people, hurts lives, destroys lives."

A spokesperson for Khosla did not immediately respond to Insider's request for any additional comment ahead of publication.

A study from researchers with OpenAI and the University of Pennsylvania found that AI tools, like ChatGPT, will likely impact up to 80% of the US workforce, reported Insider. AI jobs in tech, mathematics, accounting, and communication fields will be especially at risk, the researchers found.

Goldman Sachs researchers recently estimated that 300 million full-time jobs across the globe could be disrupted by AI. The report also highlighted that US workers in legal and administrative positions are especially vulnerable.

Khosla said more research is needed to aid in the advancement of the recent boom in AI — especially as more global powers race to gain the upper hand in AI. Khosla said there are some countries, citing Rwanda and Brazil, that may not be able to fund their own AI. That stands in contrast to China, he said, which has buckled down on AI with a five-year plan to dominate in this technology.