Sam Altman Reveals The Future " People Will Lose Jobs"

So Sam Altman recently said something in an interview that I wouldn't say is rather striking considering today's implications of AI and the future labor market. But I think it is kind of interesting considering his position as the CEO of OpenAI, the company that's poised to disrupt the labor market in the future years to come. And the reason I say this is super interesting, because this is probably the first time that Sam Altman has stated publicly that jobs will be lost due to AI, will lose jobs, many new.

Jobs will be created. I think much better jobs. We feel a responsibility to educate society as we see it. We'll be right about some things, wrong about others, and to be as good as we can at being stewards of this technology. But, you know, not everyone's going to like all of the impacts, but this is coming. This is like this is a scientific achievement of humanity that is going to get embedded in everything we do. The definition of work changes. You know, the someone that lived thousands of years ago that was trying to be like a subsistence farmer probably would look at what you and I do now and say, that's not really work. They're just having fun. I think it will be so clear once these robots are off doing all of these other things that there's some special human things and we don't really care about that much what those robots do. In the same way that, you know, we don't care that much about the machines and factories making stuff for us.

Right?

But we'll find stuff to do that we really care about.

That statement that Sam Altman just uttered isn't the first time he's actually spoken about this. If you're familiar with Sam Altman's predictions for the future, you'll be familiar with this document, which is essentially his blog post, where he talks frequently about how the economy is going to change and how radically different the future is going to look. Now, in his recent one, he actually spoke about how, you know, most jobs will change and there's going to be a significant change in the labor market, good and bad, in the coming years. Now, I do want to state that whilst, yes, this is true, you know how they keep saying that most jobs will change more slowly than people think, and I have no fear we'll run out of things to do, even if they don't look like real jobs today. One of the things that can't escape my mind is the fact that this is probably the first time ever that we are inventing technology that could potentially do everything. I mean, if we get to the stage where we do have humanoid robots that are completely superseding humans in all areas. I do wonder to myself what it looks like for a human to have any sort of economic value. Of course, I could be completely wrong, but. But I think the main reason that people are struggling to see the world where this kind of technology actually creates new jobs is because of the fact that AI is going to be better than humans in every way. Now, I'm not trying to make a video that's completely doomer, but I do think that it is, of course, something that concerns many people. Now Sam Altman also states that many jobs that we do today would have looked like trifling waste of time to people a few hundred years ago, which is pretty accurate. And nobody is looking back at the past wishing they were a lamplighter. The person who would go up to light the lamps, you know, that thing does seem pretty useless in today's economy where we have electricity. And he says that, you know, if that person could see the world today, they would think about all the prosperity around them and how unimaginable it was. And if we could fast forward 100 years from today, the prosperity all around us would feel just as unimaginable. Now, one of the things that we also do need to talk about is the fact that whilst yes, there is going to be prosperity, we do have to understand what kind of society we live in. And the godfather of AI, Geoffrey Hinton, actually spoke about this in an interview and he speaks about a topic that I think a lot of people are quite scared to mention. What sort of society do you see evolving? Which job will still be here?

Yes, I'm very worried about AI taking over lots of mundane jobs and that should be a good thing. It's going to lead to a big increase in productivity, which leads to a big increase in wealth. And if that wealth was equally distributed, that would be great. But it's not going to be in the systems we live in that wealth is going to go to the rich and not to the people whose jobs get lost. And that's going to be very bad for society, I believe. So it's going to increase the gap between rich and poor, which increases the chances of right wing populists getting elected. So to be clear, you think that the societal impacts from the changes in job could be so profound that we may need to rethink the politics of, I know, the benefit system, inequality, universal basic income. Yes, I certainly believe in universal basic income. I don't think that's enough because A lot of people get their self respect from the job they do. And if you put everybody on universal basic income, that doesn't. That solves the problem of them starving and not being able to pay the rent, but it doesn't solve the self respect.

Now, when Jeffrey Hinton was actually discussing this, I couldn't help but keep my eyes glued to the screen because it's one of the issues, like I said before, that most people who are heavy within the AI industry in terms of their knowledge and expertise don't focus on the issue. And like I said before, the people who are working at these companies, that's not really their main issue. They're not politicians, they're not the policymakers. Their main issue is just to ensure that these AI models continue to get better. And right now you can see on screen is something that has been keeping some of the wealthiest up at night. Now this article, full disclaimer is from 2015, but it did start doing the rounds on Reddit recently because the title is very striking considering the world of automation that we are going to be entering. And it says that the Cartier boss with $7.5 billion fortune says the prospect of poor people rising up keeps him awake at night. And I think this article is a lot more striking today when we take a look at how quickly things are moving. And this person who is a billionaire actually speaks about how this is his greatest fear, the fact that robots are going to be replacing workers and the poor are going to be rising up to bring down the rich. He said he had been reading about the changes in labor, technology, as well as recent Oxfam figures suggesting that the top 1% of the global population now owns more wealth than the other 99%. And I think, you know, considering today's statistics, the way the economy has gone, I think it's probably even worse. And one of the things that he actually questions here, he says, how is society going to cope with structural unemployment and the hatred and social welfare? We are destroying the middle classes at this stage and it will affect us. It's quite unfair. And that's what keeps me awake at night. Now I want to, you know, think about this for a second because I'm actually wondering, is this person actually concerned with the state of society or is this person concerned for their own safety and well being? Because I'm not entirely sure which is which. Now, immediately, if you hear billionaire, you know, worried about poor workers rising up, you just think of someone in the ivory tower who is just trying to keep the quote unquote poor people out. But the way that this is phrased, it kind of seems to be like this person is actually saying, you know what, I understand that I'm a billionaire, but at the same time, we have to think of society as a whole so that it doesn't get too crazy. And of course, if you know anything about the middle class, it's been getting hammered for a while now. Now, of course, something that, you know, upon a second read didn't really go down well with me was the fact that he stated that conflicts between social classes will make selling luxury goods more tricky as the rich will want to conceal their wealth. Now, I think this is very true and probably one of the most authentic statements I've seen, considering this was nearly 10 years ago now I've seen in many different countries. I mean, currently, if you are familiar with London, if any of you have experienced what it's like to own something that's somewhat nice, people will literally steal in broad daylight. And it's pretty incredible how it happens. And I think this is why certain cities like Dubai, where they have incredible levels of. I'm not sure if it's security or perhaps fear, but either way, they don't have any sort of crime there. I think that's why those spots are becoming a real hotspot for tourists with luxury goods. I think it's now more common as the wealth disparity gets larger and larger, that people are starting to steal in plain sight. And I do wonder how AI and automation is going to exacerbate this. As many individuals and of course, as companies start to downsize in terms of their hiring plans and of course the expenses that they're going to be doing, you know, of course, in terms of employees. And this is where, you know, even Bill Gates, he actually talks about how this is the first piece of technology that actually has no limit. And you know, no one is really safe from this because it's going to be able to do blue collar jobs and white collar jobs. And in this specific clip, he actually talks about whether or not we can really trust the government to respond fast enough.

It's the first technology that has no limit. I mean, when you invent a tractor or even a cell phone, you kind of figure out, okay, we can figure out how that's going to change life here, where the AI is very intelligent and when you put it in robotic form, it can do a lot of both blue collar and white collar jobs. The fact that's happening over the next decade, the idea of, do we really Trust government to adjust the tax policies and make sure that, okay, we're shortening the work week. So it's happening very fast and it's unlimited. A lot of it is super good, like you know, inner city, inner city, personal tutors for all the kids, great health care even in the poor countries. So the good stuff, which maybe gets crowded out by these fears, that's.

So now I've said actually, yes here because we can actually look to a recent example of where the economy did collapse. And that example I'm referring to is where the US economy began widespread shutdowns due to COVID 19 in mid March 2020, with many states closing non essential businesses starting March 2020 around the time of the pandemic. Now what's crazy is that the pandemic actually forced the government to put out the first round of stimulus checks which were the economic impact payments under the CARES act and they were signed into law on March 27, 2020 and payments began being distributed on April 11, 2020. So using this timeline, it took about four weeks from the initial industry shutdowns to, to the first stimulus payments to reach recipients, which is honestly for the government a pretty quick response. And I do wonder if something like this is going to happen considering how quickly we know that AI technology could proliferate. I mean, when we look at ChatGPT, that was one of the fastest growing consumer pieces of software. So I'm wondering if that is going to be the case when we start to get these advanced AI systems or if it's going to be a slower process and it's going to be something that most people don't realize.

OpenAI CTO Mira Muradi recently said that some creative job jobs will go away. It was a striking admission. And then she said, but maybe they shouldn't have been there in the first place. So we often hear, and I've heard it from you, that AI is just an amplifier of people's work. But just being real here, to what extent will this just replace a good number of jobs? And given what you're building, would you advise someone to go into customer service today?

It's a very nuanced and important question. And I think if you zoom out, you know, you look at past, you know, 200 years of technology adoption here in the United States, we've gone from an agrarian economy to an industrial economy to a services economy. And a lot of that has been driven by technology. And I think that, you know, if you look at even the past 30 years where you have the birth of the Internet and the smartphone and how that's impacted jobs. We've seen a lot of both job displacement but also new jobs emerge. And I think it's I think the same thing will likely happen with artificial intelligence. Some things will be automated because this next generation of technology affords the ability to automate but also create new jobs.

So with that being said, I'd love to know your thoughts on the future of the job market. I think it's clear that this is, of course where we're headed and I think it's an unavoidable fate for the economy if we're actually going to start implementing the AI technologies that you're seeing pretty much daily on this channel. So let me know what you think about these kind of statements and what your plans are if AI and automation is something that potentially threatens your industry. I'd love to know your thoughts. And until next time, I'll see you in the next video.