OpenAI CEO Sam Altman predicts that his expected child, like all future generations, will grow up in a world where artificial intelligence outsmarts humans – and that’s perfectly fine, he says.
“My kid is never gonna grow up being smarter than AI,” Altman said during a recent appearance on the “Re:Thinking” podcast with Adam Grant. “And that’ll be natural. And of course it’s smarter than us. Of course, it can do things we can’t, but also who really cares?”
The tech executive emphasized that while AI will transform the economy and workforce, human abilities will remain valuable – just in different ways. Rather than raw intellectual capacity, Altman suggests the focus will shift to other skills.
“The kind of dumb version of this would be figuring out what questions to ask will be more important than figuring out the answer,” he explained.
Drawing parallels to AI’s evolution in chess, Altman noted how the technology progressed from losing to humans to eventually surpassing human abilities. However, he pointed out that the most effective approach emerged when humans and AI collaborated, outperforming AI working alone.
This perspective comes as OpenAI advances its autonomous AI capabilities, recently launching “Tasks,” a feature enabling ChatGPT to handle reminders and news summaries. The company plans to release an enhanced agent called “Operator” later this month, capable of coding and travel booking.
Altman believes these developments are just the beginning. “I suspect we’ll have to figure out new models again,” he said, suggesting AI agents will eventually tackle complex projects that currently “require like a whole organization over many years.”