{"id":243232,"date":"2025-10-27T02:43:13","date_gmt":"2025-10-27T02:43:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/243232\/"},"modified":"2025-10-27T02:43:13","modified_gmt":"2025-10-27T02:43:13","slug":"chatgpt-chief-sam-altman-says-ai-could-eliminate-jobs-that-arent-real-work-comments-come-among-mounting-evidence-of-jobs-being-replaced-by-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/243232\/","title":{"rendered":"ChatGPT chief Sam Altman says AI could eliminate jobs that aren\u2019t \u2018real work\u2019 \u2014 comments come among mounting evidence of jobs being replaced by AI"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sam Altman isn\u2019t known for understatement, but even by his own standards, what he said on stage at OpenAI\u2019s DevDay conference earlier this month was pretty problematic. In a live interview with AI newsletter founder Rowan Cheung, Altman made a sweeping claim<\/a> that many jobs that vanish in the age of large language models might not have been \u201creal work\u201d in the first place.<\/p>\n

Responding to a thought experiment about how a farmer from 50 years ago might view our current reality, Altman said, \u201cThe thing about that farmer\u2026 [is that] they very likely would look at what you do and I do and say, \u2018that\u2019s not real work.\u2019\u201d Altman said this makes him feel \u201ca little less worried\u2026 [but] more worried in some ways. If you\u2019re\u2026 farming\u2026 you\u2019re doing something people really need. This is real work.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a statement that has been clipped, memed<\/a>, and torn to shreds on social media, labelled everything from callous to dystopian. But in fairness to Altman, he\u2019s not the first person to suggest that swathes of modern work is little more than performance art. A decade ago, the late anthropologist David Graeber wrote On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs, arguing that many workers secretly believe their jobs are pointless. The essay went viral and was later published as a bestselling book in 2018.<\/p>\n

You may like<\/p>\n

Graeber\u2019s core claim \u2014 that entire sectors of the economy are built on box-ticking bureaucracy with no social value \u2014 has been cited by everyone from disgruntled office workers to policy think tanks. Altman\u2019s framing felt smug, sure, but it\u2019s not without precedent.<\/p>\n

The trouble is, the data hasn\u2019t really backed it up. A 2021 study using the European Social Survey found that only about five percent of people said their jobs felt useless. A similar U.S. study put that number closer to twenty percent. In both cases, the researchers concluded that feelings of pointlessness were more about poor management and work culture than about the job itself. If your boss is a micromanager and your workflow is broken, even valuable work can feel fake. That\u2019s not proof that the role should be automated out of existence.<\/p>\n

Where Altman\u2019s comment holds water is in what it hints at, even if it doesn\u2019t spell it out. Most jobs aren\u2019t fake, but many have accumulated layers of automatable junk: compliance checklists, reports nobody reads, emails summarizing meetings that could\u2019ve been Slack threads. That\u2019s the kind of \u201cgame-playing\u201d work LLMs are already good at. When Altman says these models will wipe out tasks, not just roles, this is what he likely means. And on that point, he could be right.<\/p>\n

Follow Tom’s Hardware on Google News<\/a>, or add us as a preferred source<\/a>, to get our latest news, analysis, & reviews in your feeds.<\/p>\n

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