Sam Altman speaks again and says AI will wreck entire job categories

Altman’s at it again: during a conference in Washington, OpenAI’s chief executive spoke of a future where AI dominates, crushes jobs, and tells heads of states what to do.

Altman, of course, has been acting like a self-appointed AI prophet for quite a while now. But even while industry observers ridicule his bizarre ideas and visions, the OpenAI CEO doesn’t even think about stopping.

In Washington, where he participated in the Capital Framework for Large Banks conference at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, Altman almost traditionally spoke of an AI-dominated and fantastical future.

In what is in all fairness a standard observation, he told the crowd that certain job categories would be completely eliminated by AI advancement.

“Some areas, again, I think just like totally, totally gone,” he said, mentioning customer support roles.

“That’s a category where I just say, you know what, when you call customer support, you’re on target and AI, and that’s fine.”

According to Altman, the transformation of customer service is actually already complete: “Now you call one of these things and AI answers. It’s like a super-smart, capable person. There’s no phone tree, there’s no transfers.”

“It can do everything that any customer support agent at that company could do. It does not make mistakes. It’s very quick. You call once, the thing just happens, it’s done,” explained Altman, seemingly still eager to play the role of Godfather of AI.

Altman then turned to healthcare. Microsoft recently announced an AI system allegedly better than human doctors at diagnosing complex health conditions, and the OpenAI founder is confident of a rosy future.

“ChatGPT today, by the way, most of the time, can give you better – it’s like, a better diagnostician than most doctors in the world,” he said.

In June, a study found that AI chatbots can be easily manipulated to spread false medical advice, even presenting a convincing tone and fake citations.

Fortunately, Altman added that he wouldn’t entrust his “medical fate” to ChatGPT without a human doctor in the loop. Indeed, in June, a study found that AI chatbots can be easily manipulated to spread false medical advice, even presenting a convincing tone and fake citations.

OpenAI has been losing talent to Mark Zuckerberg’s Meta recently. The social media company poached quite a few of the AI startup’s top researchers in June.

They are now working for Meta’s AI group called Meta Superintelligence Labs, which focuses on developing AI superintelligence.