OpenAI
What Sam Altman, Founder of OpenAI, Thinks about the Future of Work
Despite the uncertainties regarding the future of the job market, Sam Altman, billionaire co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, sees a positive scenario ahead. While some jobs lose relevance, Altman believes that the transformations brought about by AI should create new opportunities in the corporate world.
“I am confident that there will be many jobs, and that many of them will be different from the ones we know today. But there never seems to be a shortage of things to do,” he said during an interview with Chris Hyams, CEO of global jobs platform Indeed, at the Indeed FutureWorks Conference last week. “As the tools change, the result changes too.”
Artificial intelligence, which began to be developed in the 1950s and has been used since the 1980s, gained popularity with ChatGPT, a generative AI chatbot launched by OpenAI in November 2022. Today, the tool has 200 million weekly users, and Brazil is the fourth most used platform in the world rankings. “Our model made a much bigger difference than we imagined.”
Among the many impacts of generative AI, jobs stand out. According to research by the IMF (International Monetary Fund), 40% of current positions are expected to be affected by new technology worldwide. This prediction is reinforced by a study by the McKinsey Global Institute, which indicates that by 2030, around 14% of professionals may need to change careers due to digitalization, robotics and advances in AI. “I think it will be amazing when AI can do my job better, but I've been doing this for a while and at least I got to enjoy the fun part,” says Sam Altman.
This is not the first time that technology has caused significant changes in the corporate world. Over the years, previous innovations have also raised similar concerns in the job market. “When I was at school, people said that programming would kill a lot of jobs,” says the CEO. “In the end, it eliminated some functions, but created many other opportunities”
One of the differences to the current scenario is the speed of change. Over the past eight years, the search for professionals with AI skills has grown 323%, according to a report this year by Microsoft and LinkedIn, which surveyed 31,000 people in 31 countries, including Brazil.
It may seem difficult to keep up with the frenetic pace of AI advances, but the secret is learning how to use these new tools to your advantage. “You need to feel very comfortable with them, because we don’t know exactly what the jobs of the future will look like.”