OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says AI is like an intern today, but it will soon match experienced software engineers

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says that AI is aking to an intern and predicted that AI agents could help humanity discover new knowledge from next year. The statement by Altman comes at a time when there is growing anxiety over the loss of jobs due to the increasing capabilties of AI models.

Speaking at the Snowflake Summit last week, Altman said, “Today [AI] is like an intern that can work for a couple of hours but at some point it’ll be like an experienced software engineer that can work for a couple of days,”

“I would bet next year that in some limited cases, at least in some small ways, we start to see agents that can help us discover new knowledge, or can figure out solutions to business problems that are very non-trivial,” Altman added.

Meanwhile, the OpenAI CEO while speaking at the Milken Institute’s Global Conference last month said, “You’re not going to lose your job to an AI, but you’re going to lose your job to someone who uses AI,”

Notably, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei had recently claimed that AI could wipe out almost half of all entry level white collar jobs in the next 5 years as the new technology gets better by time.

Sundar Pichai disagrees with Dario Amodei:

Google CEO Sundar Pichai, however, seemed more optimistic while speaking at the Lex Fridman podcast last week when he said that the technology will serve as an ‘accelerator’ and will free up humans to do more creative tasks. The tech leader also stated that Google will be hiring software engineers in the short to medium term.

Disagreeing with Anthropic CEO's statement, Pichai said, “I respect that … I think it’s important to voice those concerns and debate them.”

Notably, AI companies like Google and OpenAI had launched their software engineering agents earlier in the year which are aimed at replacing software enginners.