Trump ally says AI could erase entire job categories
'Some areas, again, I think just like totally, totally gone,' he said, specifically referencing customer support roles. 'That's a category where I just say, you know what, when you call customer support, you're on target and AI, and that's fine.' Altman, who has an estimated net worth of $1.8 billion, also suggested that AI could already diagnose a patient better than doctors, The Guardian reported.
His comments come as an increasing number of Wall Street CEOs have warned about how the rise of AI will take a sledgehammer to jobs. 'Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.,' Ford CEO Jim Farley said earlier this month.
Altman said the transformation of customer services is already all but complete. 'Now you call one of these things and AI answers. It's like a super-smart, capable person. There's no phone tree, there's no transfers. It can do everything that any customer support agent at that company could do,' he said. 'It does not make mistakes. It's very quick. You call once, the thing just happens, it's done.'
While he said AI's diagnostic capabilities had surpassed human doctors, he did not go so far as to say the technology would wipe out healthcare jobs. 'ChatGPT today, by the way, most of the time, can give you better – it's like, a better diagnostician than most doctors in the world,' he said. 'Yet people still go to doctors, and I am not, like, maybe I'm a dinosaur here, but I really do not want to, like, entrust my medical fate to ChatGPT with no human doctor in the loop.'
Altman also opened up about his biggest concerns about AI technology, and how it could be a hotbed for fraud. He said he is concerned that the US is facing an 'impending fraud crisis' as AI could enable criminals to impersonate other people. 'A thing that terrifies me is apparently there are still some financial institutions that will accept a voice print as authentication for you to move a lot of money or do something else – you say a challenge phrase, and they just do it,' Altman said. 'That is a crazy thing to still be doing… AI has fully defeated most of the ways that people authenticate currently, other than passwords.' He also said that he worries about a hostile nation using these weapons to attack the US financial system, The Guardian reported.
It comes as Altman, and OpenAI, ramp up their presence in Washington. Altman is increasingly taking the place of his estranged co-founder Elon Musk in the President's inner circle. Musk and Altman were once close collaborators in the founding of OpenAI, but are now engaged in a public feud, with Musk suing the company in November last year. He said the company was 'perverting' its original mission – maximizing profits rather than benefiting humanity.
On Tuesday, Altman said OpenAI will open its first office in DC early next year. Despite Altman's warnings about the risks of the technology, there has been a marked change in the mood music around regulation in the last several years. Under the Biden administration, OpenAI and its rivals asked for AI regulation. Now they are urging the government to avoid regulation that could curb companies' ability to compete with foreign innovations, particularly in China.
The White House released its 'AI action plan' on Wednesday, vowing to keep 'woke AI' models out of Washington and to win the 'AI race.' One executive order states that the federal government 'has the obligation not to procure models that sacrifice truthfulness and accuracy to ideological agendas.' The administration also signed an order to incite innovation and remove what it called 'onerous Federal regulations' that hamper development of the tech.
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