« A superintelligence would do better than me »: the shocking realization of the creator of ChatGPT about our jobs

The artificial intelligence that gently confines itself to repetitive tasks is about to end. By stepping onto the stage of the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi, Sam Altman dashed the hopes of those who thought they were safe.

By then, most of the world's intellectual capacity will no longer be in our heads, but humming in massive data centers. The message is clear, the machine will surpass humans, and even the leather chairs of the big bosses will be left behind.

The CEO's chair in the crosshairs

"A superintelligence [...] would be capable of doing a better job as CEO of a large company than any leader, and certainly better than me," explained the CEO of OpenAI. The admission is enough to chill the blood of boardrooms. White-collar workers feel the shift, and rightly so. Sam Altman fully acknowledges it: competing with the raw power of a GPU will become mission impossible in almost all sectors.

But the father of ChatGPT doesn't stop at a mere technical observation. He wields a political threat. Should this superintelligence be in the hands of a single company or a single state? The worst-case scenario, synonymous with global ruin. To prevent a totalitarian shift, he urgently calls for a global AI watchdog, modeled after the nuclear safety agency.

18 months to save the white-collar workers?

In the corridors of Silicon Valley, this apocalyptic speech is no longer a surprise. The tide is already sweeping away the job market. As we wrote recently on 01net, Microsoft has already吹 the whistle to end the recess: its AI chief, Mustafa Suleyman, gives 18 months at most before the machine fully automates the tasks of lawyers, accountants, or project managers.

Computer developers are indeed the first to face the brunt. Generating code has become a child's play for algorithms, forcing an entire profession to reinvent itself urgently to avoid being left behind.

The absolute obligation to reinvent oneself

Surprisingly, the billionaire refuses to succumb to catastrophism. If machines destroy our current jobs, it's to push us to evolve. In a few centuries, our descendants will probably laugh at our stressful and time-consuming jobs, seeing them as absurd hobbies.

"Technology always disrupts employment. We always end up finding new and better things to do. People from 500 years ago would have found many of our current jobs ridiculous, like ways to entertain ourselves or create stress. And people in 500 years will see us, hopefully, as incredibly wealthy people playing games, looking for ways to pass the time, but we should all hope that they feel more fulfilled than we do today," said Sam Altman.

The deadline is set. Between Microsoft's 18-month guillotine and OpenAI's 2028 horizon carved in stone, the countdown is accelerating violently. The real question is no longer whether AI will replace us at the office, but how society will weather the shock without blowing up mid-flight. The CEO of ChatGPT ends on a positive note: « We always find new and better things to do |…] I am convinced that we will remain driven by the desire to be useful to each other, to express our creativity, to gain recognition, to compete, and much more ».

Find the full speech by Sam Altman in video here :

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Source : Fortune