From AI workslop to AGI run billion dollar companies: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman talks about the future of AGI

At OpenAI’s DevDay, CEO Sam Altman shared insights with The Rundown AI’s Rowan Cheung on the future of AI, its effects on jobs, the rise of sloppy AI work, and why he’s “envious” of Gen Z college dropouts.

In a 30-minute-long video, Altman told the host that as artificial intelligence becomes more prominent, he and his friends have a betting pool on when the first one-person billion-dollar company would appear. But since the technology still has a long way to go before it can run a company on its own, the OpenAI CEO said that the conversation is now headed towards the first zero-person company, where everything would be done by AI agents.

He went on to say that his definition of AGI is “when it outperforms humans at most economically valuable work”, but added that the concept is still fuzzy at best since everyone has a different view of what it could look like. Talking about AGI’s capabilities, he said that the technology would help humans make both big and small discoveries or give a fresh perspective about things, especially in areas like science and maths.

“I don’t want to overstate or understate it either, but this is like the thing. And the fact that we are at the very beginning of that and that we are optimistic will be able to push hard on it in the coming months and years, like that is a big deal,” he added.

Touching on the very topic of AI work slop, Altman said AI behaves like any other tool and that, depending on how people use it, the technology can both enhance and hinder productivity. “The economy is self-correcting, and people and companies that use tools to get more done will have more ability to influence the future than people who use it slow organisations down and do less.”

For those not in the loop, a recent study by Harvard Business Review defines AI workslop as “AI-generated work content that masquerades as good  work, but lacks the substance to meaningfully advance a given task.” The problem with such content is that it is mostly unhelpful or incomplete and transfers the burden to the receiver.

Coming to Gen Z, the OpenAI CEO said he’s “envious of the current generation of 20-year-old dropouts” because the amount of stuff they can build is “incredibly wide.” Altman added that in the last few years, he did not get a “real chunk of free mental space.”

To give you a quick recap, he dropped out of Stanford University 20 years ago after studying computer science for about two years. “The degree to which OpenAI is, like, taking over all of my mental space, and I don’t get to go think about how to build a new startup, is a little bit sad”, he added.