Sam Altman says AI is changing the definition of “real jobs”.

In a thought-provoking talk after the DevDay conference, Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, made the idea that many of our current jobs may not be “real work” by comparing traditional jobs like agriculture to today’s jobs. He believes that with the advent of artificial intelligence, our definition of work is on the verge of a major transformation.

The debate was sparked when Rowan Chiang, on the other side of a conversation with Sam Altman, made this analogy: “If you told a farmer fifty years ago that the Internet would create a billion new jobs, he probably wouldn’t have believed you.”

Altman expanded on this idea, saying that a farmer from that era would probably see the jobs we have today as pointless and unnecessary. “When you’re farming, you’re doing something that people really need,” he explained. You produce food for them and keep them alive. This is real work.” In contrast, he pointed out that many modern professions seem more like “games to pass the time” to that farmer.

Altman believes that the same cycle will repeat itself with the advent of Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), and future generations may look at our jobs today and consider them more real.

Sam Altman’s comments on the meaning of work in the age of artificial intelligence

According to Altman, what people know as “real work” changes in every era. Just as an industrial worker of the past might see the job of a marketing strategist or software engineer today as a kind of artificial and unrealistic productivity, we too may fall into the same mindset in understanding the jobs of the future.

Although Altman understands concerns about the replacement of a billion knowledge-intensive workforces by artificial intelligence, he is optimistic about humanity’s ability to adapt. “I think people will still have a lot of meaning in their lives,” he says. “What we know as work is really changing.”

He believes that human ambition will inevitably find new ways to express itself; Whether in space exploration, brain-computer interfaces, or creative problem solving. Emphasizing his belief in human ingenuity, Altman said: “I’m willing to bet on human motivation.”

Ultimately, Altman’s view is both reassuring and troubling. On the one hand, he diminishes the fear of widespread unemployment by considering the concept of work to be evolutionary. On the other hand, it suggests that the line between “real” and “artificial” work may blur completely in the coming decades. The real question is not whether artificial intelligence will take our jobs, but what “work” will essentially mean when machines can do almost everything better than us.