OpenAI CEO Sam Altman may have just threatened the customer service industry. Altman has said that he is “confident” that AI will first replace customer service jobs as it changes the job market.
Speaking on a recent episode of “The Tucker Carlson Show,” Altman said, “I’m confident that a lot of current customer support that happens over a phone or computer, those people will lose their jobs, and that’ll be better done by an AI.”
“Someone told me recently that the historical average is about 50 per cent of jobs significantly change… every 75 years, on average. My controversial take would be that this is going to be like a punctuated equilibria moment where a lot of that will happen in a short period of time,” he said.
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Altman is a prominent American entrepreneur and investor, best known as the CEO of OpenAI, the organization behind the AI language model ChatGPT. Born in 1985 in Chicago, he co-founded the location-based social networking app Loopt in 2005, which was later acquired.
Altman then served as president of the influential startup accelerator Y Combinator from 2014 to 2019. In 2019, he shifted focus to artificial intelligence by joining OpenAI, where he has played a key role in advancing AI technologies.
Under Altman’s leadership, OpenAI has made significant breakthroughs, including the launch of ChatGPT and plans to introduce new compute-intensive features to explore the limits of AI. He predicts AI agents will increasingly enter the workforce by 2025, transforming industries and productivity. Beyond AI, Altman has shown interest in clean energy initiatives and advocates for responsible AI development, emphasizing the need to align AI advancements with human values for the benefit of society.
Altman now believes the staffing structure of contact centers will shift rapidly, a shift from his earlier prediction that human customer service would disappear entirely. However, he adds that roles requiring human connection, such as nursing, are unlikely to vanish.
“No matter how good the advice of the AI is or the robot, you’ll really want that,” he explained. Meanwhile, support agents who are also capable of providing reassurance, especially when it comes to vulnerable customers.
Altman’s views, though, don’t appear to be shared by everyone. Anthropic cofounders Dario Amodei and Jack Clark sounded the alarm regarding artificial intelligence possibly replacing human jobs during an Axios event.
“I think it is likely enough to happen that we felt there was a need to warn the world about it and to speak honestly,” Amodei said.
While this change may lead to job displacement in certain sectors, it also reflects the evolving nature of work, where technology takes over routine tasks, allowing human workers to focus on roles requiring empathy, creativity, and complex problem-solving.
Altman’s perspective also stresses the irreplaceable value of human connection in fields like healthcare and emotional support, suggesting a future where humans and AI collaborate rather than compete.