OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
Speaking on a 45-minute podcast with Matthew Berman, Altman said AI has changed how programmers work but has not reduced the need for coding. He also pointed out that people had been certain, just six or 12 months earlier, that AI would reduce the need for coders.
“Coders are never going to be busier than they’ve been and coders are never going to have more of an impact and make more money,” Altman said, explaining why AI has not led to the decline in coding work that many had predicted. Altman said the initial reaction to AI’s coding abilities was that there would be less need for human programmers. However, he said, demand for software has turned out to be much greater than expected. “The world actually had demand for just way more software than any of us thought at the time,” Altman said. AI has changed the nature of coding work rather than eliminated the need for it, according to him. He said it was still unclear whether AI would create greater demand for mathematicians in the same way it had for software developers. “Maybe we’re not going to discover new math theorems or prove them in an unaided way anymore,” Altman said. Altman said there could be other tasks that mathematicians would be able to perform better with AI, although he was unsure whether this would lead to more jobs overall. Altman said the opposite appears to be happening so far, as people continue to find more things they want to accomplish with new technology. “I think we probably will find that there’s a lot of other things that mathematicians do that we really want people to do and they can do those much better,” he said. I get be a little bit less busy and kind of more time for everything else in their life,” Altman said.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman believes software developers could become busier than ever despite the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI). Instead, he argued, the world wants far more software than people had expected. During the podcast, Matthew Berman asked Sam Altman why programmers had not seen their jobs disappear as AI tools became capable of writing more code. During the podcast, Sam Altman also discussed whether the same pattern could emerge in mathematics, where AI is increasingly being used to solve complex problems. However, he suggested that the nature of their work could change. He added that mathematicians could focus more on understanding new ideas, explaining them clearly and developing proofs that people can follow. The discussion also touched on the expectation that AI would reduce the amount of work people need to do. He added that technology should ideally allow people to work less and have more time for other parts of their lives. However, he noted that people often use the time saved by technology to take on more work. “I always hope that people get to work a little bit less. “But man, does it sure seem like we’re good at wanting more out of life and wanting more out of the world and making ourselves busier. You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.
As AI tools make it easier to build software, developers can take on more projects and work on tasks that were previously difficult or too time-consuming.