Sam Altman rejects the idea that advanced artificial intelligence (AI) models will pave the way for a four-day working week. The OpenAI CEO thinks humans will be frustrated if technology handles more tasks, but they will be "secretly happy" being busy.
On a July episode of Ti Morse's Relentless Entrepreneurial podcast, Sam, 41, said, "Technology, for a long time, has been promising people that they're going to work less and they're going to have all this leisure, and it has gone in that direction."
© NBCAdding, "I think people do have more time for leisure than they had at many previous points in history and a higher quality of life in many ways. But somehow we never get the promise of the four-hour workweek at mass scale in society. And I don't expect AI to change that."
Human competitiveness fuels hunger for more
The billionaire says humans' natural desire to compete against each other means "our expectations go up [and] we always want more" despite AI allowing people to work more efficiently and produce better results, and that it "drives the economy".
Sam thinks that "the desire to want to be useful to other people" will remain as technology continues to advance.
"We're all going to be much busier than we thought we were supposed to be in a post-superintelligence world. We're still going to complain about it, but secretly we're going to be happy."
Sam said that he "really admires" humans' tendency to "think of new things to do, to create for each other, to want for ourselves".
The entrepreneur thinks AI will boost productivity and benefit more people, even if people keep working for the same hours.
© Mike CoppolaHumans will still find fulfilment in their jobs as AI takes on more tasks
Despite AI taking over many day-to-day tasks, Sam predicts people will still find plenty of fulfilment in their work. He said, "I think there's going to be lots of great jobs in the future, I really do, I think we're going to have lots of intellectual fulfilment."
However, Sam noted that "most jobs are going to adapt more than it feels like they should". Ti questioned if work produced by humans will still matter amid the rise of AI and it doing more, to which Sam replied, "It won't feel like that."
© Weiquan LinHe gave cooking for each other as an example of something that will still be valuable to humans, "long after robots can do a great job cooking food".
