When it comes to AI, Sam Altman says the kids are fine.
Openai CEO Altman said he is more concerned about how older employees will adapt to AI than university graduates. His view is in contrast to what his competitors and other people in technology thinks about the next five years.
“I'm worried about what it means to be not 22, but for a 62-year-old, I'm worried about anything that a politician doesn't want to go to retrain or relapse, or that no one really wants, is calling it,” Altman recently said on Cleo Abram's “Genuine Conversation” YouTube show.
Altman said jobs will definitely disappear because of AI, but young people are set to get better at getting through change than others.
“If I'd graduated from college at the age of 22 now, I would feel like the luckyest child in all of history,” Altman said.
Overall, he said the breadth of what AI can do makes this a powerful moment for those willing to seize opportunities.
“We've made something completely new, invented something, started a company, whatever it was, there's no better time,” says Altman. “I think it's probably possible to start a company that's a single company worth more than $1 billion, and more importantly, it's providing great products and services to the world.”
Related Stories
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Business Insider tells the innovative stories you want to know
Fellow tech CEOs, including AI people, should not share Altman's optimism. Mankind CEO Dario Amodei said earlier this summer that AI could wipe out half of its entry-level white-collar work over the next five years. It is a potential catastrophe that Amodei said is not doing enough to prepare the tech industry and policymakers to handle society.
Altman said that over five years his field has changed so rapidly that it's hard to predict what the world will look like.
“In 2035, if the university students were still in college, they could leave their mission to explore the solar system of a spaceship, and they said everything was good because we had to do this kind of really boring old job because it was some new, exciting, very high wages, very interesting work, and so it felt so bad for you.
