OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is once again raising concerns, but this time they pertain to jobs. During a recent trip to Washington, Sam Altman made a bold prediction that artificial intelligence will likely replace entire categories of human labor, beginning with one specific thing.
His comments come amid growing public concern about the unchecked rise of artificial intelligence in everyday industries. Altman’s remarks raise fresh concerns about AI’s economic impact.
OpenAI’s Sam Altman predicts that AI will completely replace job sectors such as customer service. The CEO of OpenAI is expressing widespread concerns that artificial intelligence could have disastrous consequences for the human labor market by threatening to eradicate entire job categories.
What exactly did Sam Altman say about job loss?
Altman claims that because AI agents are faster and more efficient, many roles will be “totally gone.” Critics warn that such automation could backfire, as customers still require human assistance.
“Some areas” of the labor market will be “just like totally, totally gone” as AI agents replace them, Altman told Michelle Bowman, the vice-chair for supervision at the Federal Reserve, during his most recent visit to Washington, DC, as per a report by Futurism.
Customer service positions were noted by Altman as a “category where I just say, you know what, when you call customer support, you’re on target and AI, and that’s fine.”
“Now you call one of these things and AI answers,” said the man. “It’s like a really intelligent, strong individual. Both the phone tree and transfers are absent. It has all the capabilities of a customer service representative at that organization.
During the remarks, the billionaire, who likely hasn’t had to interact with a customer service representative over the phone in a long time, essentially dismissed human involvement.
“It does not make mistakes,” he added. “It’s very quick. You call once, the thing just happens, it’s done,” he said, as quoted in a report by Futurism.
Is AI really ready to replace human workers?
It’s debatable if OpenAI’s technology truly approaches that objective. Critics claim that AI frequently substitutes an unreliable and vulnerable alternative for human labor.
There are also pragmatic considerations: businesses that have tried to replace human labor with unproven AI have already received a great deal of negative publicity.
How are companies and consumers reacting?
At this point, businesses are acknowledging that they are reversing their pledges to eliminate human labor.
Sebastian Siemiatkowski, the CEO of the fintech company Klarna, changed his mind after boasting that an AI assistant could perform 700 jobs. He stated that “from a brand perspective, it’s so critical that you are clear to your customer that there will always be a human if you want.”
According to a study conducted last year, most consumers oppose businesses using artificial intelligence (AI) for customer support.
The technology is causing chaos and frustration due to the obvious issues with the AI models that are currently available. For example, a customer discovered earlier this year that Cusor, an AI-powered software coding assistant, was inexplicably logging them out.
They were informed by an AI-powered customer service representative that it was “expected behavior” under a new login policy, but the glitchy AI later revealed that this was a hallucination.
Altman is envisioning a future that has not yet been created and may or may not come to pass. He wants to see it, though, because he stands to gain a lot as the head of one of the most prosperous AI firms in the sector.