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Fidji Simo, soon to be the new CEO of applications at OpenAI, laid out a memo on Tuesday explaining her perspective on the role of AI around the world. Coming to OpenAI after serving as Instacart’s CEO, she frames AI as a service for good, identifying six life pillars — knowledge, health, creative expression, economic freedom, time, and support — that can benefit from it.
She cautioned that AI development needs to be “intentional” and must acknowledge its own power.
“Every major technology shift can expand access to power — the power to make better decisions, shape the world around us, and control our own destiny in new ways,” Simo wrote in her first public memo for OpenAI. “But it can also further concentrate wealth and power in the hands of a few — usually people who already have money, credentials, and connections.
“That’s why we have to be intentional about how we build and share these technologies so they lead to greater opportunity and prosperity for more people.”
Before leading Instacart, Simo joined Facebook starting in 2011 and held multiple leadership roles there.
Simo’s experiences with Instacart mirror her stance on AI
Simo said her perspective is shaped by what she learned at Instacart, particularly “how technology can shift perceptions and behaviors around time.” Ordering groceries brought to the house by another person was once considered a luxury before services like Instacart made it more common, she said.
“But with the right product design, logistics, and pricing, we made it accessible and indispensable for everyday families,” she wrote. “Today the Instacart user base mirrors the U.S. population with millions of families getting hours back each week to spend on higher-value activities in their lives.”
This idea — that services once reserved for the wealthy can be made available to all — runs throughout her memo.
Assistants: not just for the rich
Simo identified what she called the “keys to empowerment and opportunity — knowledge, health, creativity, economic freedom, time, and support.” AI such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT can improve each in different ways, she said. For example, AI has the power to “democratize knowledge,” according to Simo’s memo. She imagined a future where everyone could have an AI tutor for any subject, providing as much opportunity for those who do not have the resources for high-quality learning as for those who do.
Similarly, she said AI assistants can help people “take charge of their own health” and empower entrepreneurs to build companies by coding websites or acting as financial guides.
AI will both eliminate and create jobs, Simo said
What about the common criticisms that AI will lead to layoffs or undermine creativity?
Simo noted in her memo that she uses AI in her own artistic practice, saying, “I paint in my spare time, but the images in my head are so much more realistic and complex than what I am able to paint today… With AI and image generation, I can prompt and iterate until the output matches the complexity and realism of the vision in my head.”
Regarding employment, she acknowledged that “companies will hire fewer people as existing teams will be able to do far more in the same number of hours, and some jobs will be eliminated entirely. But many new jobs will be created, too. That’s why upskilling employees and teaching everyone how to take advantage of these technologies will be critical to ensure the economic opportunity is shared broadly,” she wrote.
OpenAI claims its custom AI model won a gold-level score at the high-school-level 2025 International Mathematical Olympiad, but there’s some debate over whether it was graded accurately.