Sam Altman statement about AI wiping out jobs
In an interview with Rowan Cheung at OpenAI’s DevDay conference on October 6, 2025,
Rowan Cheung “If you told a farmer fifty years ago that this magical thing called the internet is going to create a billion new jobs, he probably wouldn’t believe you.”
Sam Altman : “If you’re, like, farming, you’re doing something people really need,” Altman explained. “You’re making them food, you’re keeping them alive. This is real work.” But the farmer would see our modern jobs as “playing a game to fill your time,” and therefore not a “real job.”
Sam Altman: “It’s very possible that if we could see those jobs of the future,” Altman said, we’d think “maybe our jobs were not as real as a farmer’s job, but it’s a lot more real than this game you’re playing to entertain yourself.
Then he added.
”… but I can very much believe that what we think of as work really changes. And from our reference perspective it would maybe look like less work than what we do now”
My question at LinkedIn
Anyone, preferably human, willing to define any of these opposing types of work according to his/her beliefs:
- Real work vs Unreal work
- Creative meaningful work vs Useless work
- Valuable work vs Worthless work
- Important work vs Unimportant work
- Essential work vs Inessential work
- Good work vs Bad work
…or perhaps set all of that aside and focus on the deeper goal: defining what work truly means to you !