- Billionaire OpenAI CEO Sam Altman reveals that AI can already perform the tasks of junior-level employees—and the ability for it to work days at a time is just around the corner. With fellow tech leaders like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang saying those who fail to embrace the technology will be replaced, some Gen Zers are catching on.
If you’re in desperate need of an intern, there’s good news: There may soon be an abundance of them. But they might not be able to fetch you a coffee.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman admitted this week that AI agents—AI-powered systems that can complete job-related tasks with other software tools—can now effectively do the same work as entry-level employees.
“Today [AI] is like an intern that can work for a couple of hours but at some point it’ll be like an experienced software engineer that can work for a couple of days,” Altman said on a panel with Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy.
In the coming months, AI agents will only get exponentially better, Altman said—to the point where their skills are just as good as those of an experienced software engineer. They’re anticipated to operate continuously for days on end, without pause.
“I would bet next year that in some limited cases, at least in some small ways, we start to see agents that can help us discover new knowledge, or can figure out solutions to business problems that are very non-trivial,” the 40-year-old AI CEO added. Fortune reached out to Altman for comment.
While this may seem like a grim reality for some workers, the future of human employees’ success may depend on following the advice of tech CEOs like Nvidia’s Jensen Huang. He predicted those who fail to embrace AI might be the next employee to get the pink slip.
“You’re not going to lose your job to an AI, but you’re going to lose your job to someone who uses AI,” he said at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference last month.
Gen Z may be listening to the AI warning signs
Generative AI may be eclipsing the skills of entry-level workers—like conducting research or developing PowerPoints. Some Gen Z have already seen the writing on the wall, and begun embracing the technology more than other age groups. About 51% of Gen Zers now view generative AI just like a coworker or as a friend, according to a recent survey from Resume.org. That’s compared to just over 40% of millennials and 35% of Gen Xers or baby boomers who feel the same way.
Altman has gone even further to say that many young people (including millennials) are turning to AI for far more than just internet sleuthing:
“[It’s a] gross oversimplification, but like older people use ChatGPT as a Google replacement. Maybe people in their twenties and thirties use it as like a life advisor, and then, like people in college use it as an operating system,” Altman said at Sequoia Capital’s AI Ascent event earlier this month.
“And there’s this other thing where [young people] don’t really make life decisions without asking ChatGPT what they should do,” he added.
The alarm bells are still being rung by some tech leaders
Not all tech leaders have been as upbeat about the future, and have instead used their public appearances to highlight fears of an AI-driven job-market reckoning.
According to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within five years. Unemployment could skyrocket to 10% to 20%, he told Axios. To put that into context, it’s currently at around 4%. Researchers at his company added that the next decade will be “pretty terrible” for humans as desk jobs are automated, they told tech podcaster Dwarkesh Patel in an interview.
This comes as the latest model of Claude—Anthropic’s generative AI—can now reportedly code autonomously for nearly seven hours.
