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Sam Altman Says AI Could Automate 30–40% of Work Soon, Expects Superintelligence by 2030

Altman warns recent GPT-5 gains could mean layoffs, urging tighter alignment.

Overview

  • Altman said he would be very surprised if by 2030 there were no models capable of doing things humans cannot, a threshold he associates with superintelligence.
  • He forecast that AI could in the near future handle roughly 30–40% of tasks across the economy, emphasizing task-level automation over wholesale job elimination.
  • He asserted that GPT-5 already outperforms many people in some respects and suggested AI-only scientific discoveries could be plausible within a few years.
  • He cautioned that advances may trigger mass layoffs, citing customer support roles as especially vulnerable and describing uncertainty around how programming work will evolve.
  • He called for stronger alignment to human values, rejected claims that future systems would treat people like ants, and said OpenAI is exploring a small family of consumer devices with a former Apple designer.