Sam Altman Advocates for Mastering AI Tools Over Traditional Programming Skills

OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, believes that the ability to effectively utilize artificial intelligence tools is becoming an essential skill for emerging programmers today. In a recent interview with Ben Thompson from Stratechery, he shared that in many companies, at least half of the coding is now automated.

Altman remarked that thoroughly learning programming was an «obvious strategy» when he graduated high school. However, he now considers that «the obvious approach is simply to learn how to use AI tools very effectively.»

Altman suggests that mastering AI tools represents a «new paradigm» in coding education, asserting that a significant portion of coding tasks is currently automated, with this percentage potentially exceeding 50% in many companies.

«I believe that in numerous organizations, this figure has likely already surpassed 50%,» he stated.

When asked if OpenAI intends to keep hiring programmers, Altman responded that there is «plenty of work available now,» but long-term, the AI being developed by the company may lead to a decrease in job availability in the field.

«I think programmers will have plenty of work for a while, but at some point, yes, we might actually need fewer of them,» he noted.

Altman’s views are echoed by others in the industry. Earlier, Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, predicted that AI would generate all code for programmers within a year. In January, Meta’s CEO Mark Zuckerberg told Joe Rogan that his company is working on a new AI capable of writing «most of the code» used in its applications.

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