Sam Altman says OpenAI wants to sell intelligence like a utility
During a recent appearance at BlackRock in Washington, D.C., OpenAI’s Sam Altman, shared his vision for the future of AI. At one point saying, “We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.”
Altman was describing a world where AI becomes a foundational infrastructure, something woven into everyday life so deeply that consumers and businesses simply “plug into” it the same way they rely on electricity, Wi-Fi or running water.
Exactly, I see people freaking out about this tech replacing them. It’s not gonna happen, not with OpenAI’s tech anyway. They don’t have intelligence to sell. They have LLM’s that are good at tricking people who don’t know better into thinking it’s inteligant. LLM’s can’t think and they can’t reason.
I think the worry of large layoffs and instability while idiots try to use AI instead of people is founded even if it’ll end in disaster.
Certainly, since it is already happening. It’s not gonna fully replace the workforce but it is reducing number of jobs. The amount of AI art I am seeing just on the street makes me sick, couldn’t even bother to pay an artist a small amount when starting a new business.
they will just hire from low income countries, maybe only limited amount senior level candidates in the US . thats what bio does mostly, really doesnt hire fresh undergrad, but someone with more significant experience soley, plus they can have the ones on visa with standby.
the layoffs already have been going on since 23, i think its going to accelerate to the point that even undergrads sees a tech degree might not even be worth it anymore.
my favorite part of this is that after decades of sci-fi dystopias based on fear of evil AI overlords that destroy the Earth, in reality we’re creating a dystopia where we destroy the Earth to build a bunch of shitty plagiarism bots and treat them like they’re AI overlords.
I can’t stop thinking that all dystopias are actually giving ideas to the rich.
At least one corporation is trying to make every Black Mirror episode a reality as we speak.
idiocracy, TNG,DS9 both predicted this. idiocracy specifically, was controlled by an AI.
I’m not worried about this tech replacing people, I’m worried about the fact that people are actively losing neural elasticity from using LLMs to think for them.
Dont be worried, be certain. People are RAPIDLY becoming dumber. They already were because of the dumbing down of everything in general but this is accelerating it.
I do have faith in weird pockets of people who have niche interests like role playing games and people who create cool things and write, but the masses disappoint me.
Finally someone sees it.
Sorry, but you’re wrong. I’m gonna get the downvotes because everyone loves to hate on AI, but it’s true. There are many many entry level software jobs that can get replaced right now. I do AI research for climate stuff and all of my colleagues feel the same way. Yall can live in a different reality if it makes you feel better, but it’s not the truth. That doesn’t mean it’s not a form of a bubble or at the peak of the hype cycle, though. Both things are true.
From a wealthy elite perspective, it’s the desire of the ultimate triumph of Capital over Labor, and that’s terrifying as being on the Labor side.
You are right that it can do some entry level jobs, but the system as it is requires those jobs to exist. There is no such thing as a senior developer that was not previously a junior developer.
I believe that is where the collapse will happen. There will be a sucking black hole of demand for senior talent and almost no talent pool. Add on to that the fact that the sources for LLMs’ ability to code (stack overflow, countless private forums, Reddit, etc) have been destroyed by those LLMs. How will they learn anything new?
I don’t fundamentally want the technology to fail, but it seems to ravenously consume everything, even the knowledge and manpower bases that were used to build and train it.
This is actually one of the bigger things overall, this level of disruption they hype, even if you buy the optimistic side of what can be delivered will either eventually lead to some sort of universal basic income for everyone(sus) or millions of people without income and no one able to replace the people who’s knowledge and experience are needed to correct mistakes that will for sure happen even if the models/agents get much better than they are forecasted to be. There’s more but I think the point is made.
It’s almost like people don’t realize that epistemologies have a time dimension that needs to be sustained to persist.
That epistemologies have a body, which is human behaviour.
The fuckin’ Morlocks are trying to conjure the singularity by a massive and rapid capture of the function of those epistemologies, in code that is now commodified and alienated, before their “only disrupt” ethos pulls the technological rug from under them and us completely.
What do you mean when you use the word “epistemologies” in this context?
I’m using it generally, to refer to skills, knowledge, and understanding of industries and other economic topics, per the thread. We are seeing disrupted chains of knowledge and experience, what amounts to an abdication of tradition, and a surrender of economic power. These specific epistemological systems are the fabric of civilization.
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Yeah, I’m a translator and the jobscape has completely changed. Basic shit can be done on a “eh, it’s good enough” level so I stopped getting such job offers. The only thing I get now are technical work or something more “human” required like novels, game localization, other such works of art. I think it would be really hard right now for anyone new to find clients because most people are OK with just “OK.”
I made a Lemmy community for translators who like to provide help and also add a bit of human touch to the process.
Interpreting is still in demand, I feel, because people still like hearing natural-sounding speech (AI is getting there but it’s still kinda creepy) and it still mixes up a lot of information. Also, people don’t speak with perfect grammar. They make mistakes, use filler words/sounds, trace back, mix languages… All of which confuse AI—for now. Also language pairs like English and Japanese can be a bit tricky because Japanese sentences tend to run on forever and also kinda go backwards compared to English (JA: reason then conclusion; EN: conclusion then reason, for example) which again throws off AI.
Yeah if something is important enough that I need an interpreter instead of just fumbling through it with my bad second language skills, it will be a human. Things like that require understanding nuance and context and being able to say “sorry I didn’t get that” so that they get it right.
Nice. If you need Japanese-English, you know where to find me lol hashtaghustleculture
I can hate AI and acknowledge that you’re correct.
Thank you. Also I can almost guarantee you don’t actually hate AI. You probably hate these LLMs used by OpenAI and the like, am I right?
What is there to hate about something like GraphCast, AlphaFold, or reinforcement learning for fusion research? (Funnily enough those are all from DeepMind, where my mentor actually works at now)
How capable are LLMs at replacing software jobs above an entry-level grade? I imagine giving a gaggle of fresh grads the entirety of human knowledge and asking them to create software would create something, but I don’t imagine the outcome would be high enough quality to have a net positive in productivity after someone has to spend the next 5 years adding to or changing it.
So let’s talk about the Anthropic models, cause that’s what I’m playing with on the company dime.
Wire up a few mcp configs (don’t even start me on the inherent risks associated with current MCP permissions model…) and give it a run book and it’s great at generating reports for me about stuff I kinda care about.
Could if replace an entry level grad? Sure. Will that company have all kinds of strange problems - hell yes. Think of it as an intern. You can give it all the crappy intern tasks while you make coffee. Only the intern improves when you give feedback…
Also, I wonder what happens to these companies in the future when there are no senior developers anymore, because nobody hires junior developers to train up.
Cobol. We have experienced this problem happening organically with Cobol developers. The worlds financial infrastructure runs on Cobol and anyone who had skills in this language can pick the company they want to work at.
they seem to be trying to do that, prefer to hire only senior/ or have multi-year experience in the field. biotech is pretty much at that level already, preferred candidates are the ones with GRAD degrees, or lower wage outsourced workers(visa holders) or somehow if you are lucky while getting a degree already have 2-4years experience working in a lab volunteer not as a labtech. or biotech/ health adjacent like CLS is gatekept by the limited the amount of schools that teach this graduate program(EVERYONE wants to bumrush cali to apply to those programs, so competitive)
After several attempts ai still cannot fix a bug in a set top box without introducing 3 other bugs and about 7 loops of extra, untested complexity doing fuck knows what
Congrats this is the first realistic comment about AI I’ve seen not get down voted to hell.
The problem is people are already being replaced by AI. The AI isn’t actually doing the job they vacated, but now they are in a horrible vortex called the 2026 job market.
That’s missing the point. They’re going to do it anyway, true intelligence or not.
They tech doesn’t have to do what they say it will, they just have to convince enough middle managers to make enough graphs to get the c-levels to sign off on the huge cost savings that will never materialize.
Altman is desperate if he trying to peddle whatever AI features is going on right now. HIs creator"thiel, likewise has been very active in the news"