Sam Altman gave some advice to students, one of which was to master the tools of artificial intelligence. He also shared his thoughts on agent coding and the future of programmers.
Sam Altman gave some advice to students, one of which was to master the tools of artificial intelligence. He also shared his thoughts on agent coding and the future of programmers.
"The obvious tactic is just to learn how to use AI tools well," Altman told Stratechery's Ben Thompson on Thursday. "When I was graduating, the obvious tactic was to learn how to code well. And this is the new version of that."
As talk of AI replacing software engineers gains momentum, especially as more people use vibe coding , Altman doubled down on the advice he gave in a September interview: mastering AI tools is a way to future-proof your career, Business Insider writes .
“I think in many companies it’s probably already over 50%,” Altman said, referring to the amount of coding that AI is doing. “But the biggest thing, I think, is going to be agent-based coding, which no one is really doing yet.”
When asked what was holding back the adoption of agent coding, Altman replied, “Oh, we just need a little more time,” adding that it was a model problem, not a product problem.
Altman advised students preparing for careers to develop "resilience and adaptability" and "meta-learning skills" rather than studying specific things.
“Regardless of what you’re going to study, study the general skills that you think will be important as the world goes through this transition period,” he said.
While software engineers are still in demand, Altman predicted that this won't always be the case.
"My basic assumption is that every software engineer is just going to do much, much more for a period of time. And then at some point, yeah, maybe we'll need fewer software engineers," he said, referring to OpenAI's hiring strategy.
He also predicted that the displacement of jobs by artificial intelligence would not happen immediately, but would accelerate over time.
"It just seeps through the economy and mostly absorbs everything a little bit at a time, and then it gets faster and faster," Altman said.
