Elizabeth Weil from New York Magazine describes Sam Altman as ‘tone-deaf’ while profiling him as the “Oppenheimer of Our Age”. “For me, AGI is the equivalent of a median human that you could hire as a co-worker,” said Altman. He has said this on various occasions, but this time it definitely showed him in a bad light. 

In a podcast with Lex Fridman, Altman said, “AI would be able to do anything that you’d be happy with a remote coworker doing just behind a computer, which includes learning how to be a doctor or learning how to be a very competent coder.” It seems Altman suggests that a ‘median human’, that could be any of us for him, could be soon out of job.

But at the same time, he has been promoting AI as a tool to augment human intelligence, not replace it. 

Altman believes that it is the greatest technology ever created but, “we’ve got to be careful here. I think people should be happy that we are a little bit scared of this”. At the same time, during his trip to Europe, Altman said, “The discussion has been too focused on the negatives. It does seem the balance has gotten off given all the value that people are getting from these tools these days.”

Not too altruistic, but definitely careful

Even though it may seem like Altman’s sentences are blown out of proportion, recent developments narrate a very similar story. Suumit Shah, the founder of Dukaan, recently drew a lot of flak for firing 90% of his workers to replace them with an AI chatbot. The move did get him some headlines just like Emad Mostaque when he said “programming will be dead in five years”. 

However, the 31-year old CEO of the e-commerce platform did not stop at just that. 

In a recent interview with The Washington Post, Shah basically mocked the people that he had fired. “It was a no-brainer for me to replace the entire team with a bot,” Shah said about the customer service team that he dropped entirely because he thought a bot like ChatGPT would be able to do their job. Dukaan named its GPT-powered chatbot Lina.

Shah added that these AI bots were 100 times smarter and cost him a 100th of what he used to pay to the support team. This is definitely similar to how people have been talking about replacing humans with AI bots. 

Mark Cuban predicted six years back that a lot of jobs would become obsolete with AI and customer services are definitely taking a hit. Along similar lines, Shah said that people who simply copy-paste responses are no longer safe. “That job is gone,” he said, “100 percent”. 

When Altman talks about AI only augmenting human intelligence, he often overlooks that CEOs like Shah, who are just looking to cut costs might actually just cut-off jobs of people that can be replaced with simple AI chatbots. Altman has also testified in the US Senate that he is scared of AI taking “some jobs”.

Love-hate relationship with AI

Though it is truly the time to boost productivity with AI, and not let it overwhelm us, Shah’s move is a clear example of what CEOs actually want, though it is not too altruistic. 

While some CEOs are replacing their workers, others are scared of AI replacing them. According to a recent survey, 49% of CEOs believe that AI models can replace their jobs almost entirely, and some say it could even be better than them. 

In Altman’s own words from his blogs, he has “an absolutely delusional level of self-confidence”. This means that Altman can be a little too optimistic with what this technological revolution can do, but the brunt is being taken by the people being replaced by AI. How much of that can be attributed to him remains a question.

Undoubtedly, Altman can be regarded as a person who cares about humanity. As the headline of the article goes, “Sam Altman Is the Oppenheimer of Our Age,” it shows that Altman’s views on what he is creating, and how it would be used in the future are not fully encompassing of the words he uses, and people merely call his vision “delusions of grandeur”.

On the other hand, CEOs like Shah, who are replacing people with AI, definitely have their heads in the cloud, while their feet are not so firm on the ground.