AI may replace 40% of human jobs, says OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
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Artificial Intelligence could soon replace a significant share of human work, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
Speaking to the Axel Springer Global Reporters Network, Altman said AI could perform nearly 40% of the tasks currently handled by humans.
Altman said he could “easily imagine a world where 30 to 40% of the tasks that happen in the economy today get done by AI in the not very distant future.” He noted that while some jobs would vanish, many would evolve and new ones would appear. “Think about the jobs we did 30 years ago that may not exist today, or new jobs that were hard to imagine then but are now commonplace,” he explained.
Altman expressed optimism about AI’s ability to surpass humans, saying that in many ways GPT-5 was already smarter than him and, he believed, smarter than many others too. He added that GPT-5 was capable of doing incredible things that many people found very impressive.
At the same time, Altman admitted that AI was still unable to perform many tasks that humans could handle easily. He said this gap would remain for some time, as humans continued to apply their insight, creativity, and ingenuity alongside AI tools. He added that AI’s growth curve was still extremely steep.
He predicted that AI could achieve breakthroughs beyond human reach. Pointing out that in just three years since ChatGPT launched, the models had become far more capable, he said he saw no sign of this progress slowing. By the end of the decade, by 2030, he remarked, he would be very surprised if extraordinarily capable models that could do things humans themselves could not do were not developed.
Altman also highlighted the unique human qualities that AI could not replace. He noted that what was truly distinctive was how much people cared about one another and valued human interaction, adding that these qualities would become increasingly important in a world shaped by AI.
Meanwhile, Apple is developing a ChatGPT-like system, expected to enhance Siri by next year. OpenAI also plans to build a “family of devices” aimed at redefining computing.