Sam Altman says if you’re afraid of bots taking your job, you should get good with AI

• Sam Altman advises students to master AI technology to prepare for future jobs.
• Altman compares AI’s impact to computer programming, which created more opportunities.
• Altman believes AI will enhance human creativity and potentially cure diseases like cancer.

In news that may not surprise some, Sam Altman thinks people who are worried about artificial intelligence taking their jobs should get really good at using the technology.

The OpenAI CEO said high school or college students wondering what they should study to help them prepare for the future should learn how to use AI technology.

“You want to get really comfortable with these new tools because we don’t know exactly what the jobs of the future are going to look like,” Altman said in a taped interview with Indeed CEO Chris Hyams, shown as part of an Indeed conference in Dallas on Thursday.

“I’m confident that there will be lots of jobs and also that many of them will look somewhat different today, but we never seem to run out of stuff to do,” he said.

Altman said that when he was in school, people would say many of the same things about studying computer programming. Computer technology, the thinking went, would make a lot of jobs go away, Altman said.

“To me, the most obvious thing was, ‘Well, if that’s the case, I better, like, get really good at using this tool,'” Altman said.

OpenAI, the creator of ChatGPT, is reportedly working to revamp its structure into a for-profit business, which could leave Altman billions of dollars richer. He didn’t discuss that with Hyams nor the recent exit of the company’s CTO, Mira Murati.

Computer science has been a boon

Altman’s comments appeared to indicate that he thought AI would bring more benefits than downsides, similar to the way computer software has.

“The story on computer programming has been a huge net positive. It has made some classes of jobs go away. It’s made way more new things happen and also given us the ability to do a lot of new things,” Altman said.

Altman also said that, in retrospect, it was a “really good decision” that he became comfortable with computer programming. Altman said he thinks the same principle holds now.

He suggested that high school and college students should consider how to build experiences, products, and services that people will want and will find useful is important.

“That seems like a really valuable thing — more than any specific set of knowledge,” he said.

Human creativity will evolve

Hyams asked Altman how human creativity would evolve given the prevalence of AI.

Altman pointed to the invention of the camera and concerns that images would replace any need for paintings or other types of art. Eventually, he said, artists saw it as an “incredible new tool.”

“I think we’re going to see the same thing happen here,” he said.

“It’s always tempting to call at the end of creativity. It will not happen. I don’t believe it will happen,” he said. But as the tool changes, he said, the output will change.

Altman said it’s incredible to see what artists are doing with image generators.

AI could cure cancer

He recounted a recent conversation with a scientist who told him that AI will be able to cure cancer one day. That might require human hands to run experiments at AI’s direction, and while the whole process might take a while, the result could be a fix for a type of cancer.

Altman said he agreed on AI’s potential for delivering on that type of health moonshot.

The doctor, Altman said, stated he was, in one way, sad at the prospect that AI would notch that achievement. “I wanted to be the one to do it,” the doctor said, according to Altman. The doctor also said while he wants to see a cure for cancer as soon as possible, he’d like to see a tool that would tell him, “Go investigate this.” But that same tool wouldn’t quite give the answer. “Then I still get to do it,” the doctor told Altman.

For his part, Altman said, he’s excited for a day when AI might outrun him.

“I think it’ll be awesome when AI can do my job better, but I’ve been doing it for a while, and, you know, I got to have the fun part.”