AI is an Intern
The CEO of OpenAI, Sam Altman, spoke at the Snowflake Summit 2025 about where we're at with AI and how far we could go with it. He said we are in the early stage of AI development and in thos stage he describes AI as being at the stage of an intern in the first few days of work. AI can help us do a few things for just a little while, but if the developers are being honest, it is still mostly learning.
Will AI be like people? I for one doubt that AI will be like people. It's too smart and fast to operate like a person. So just by this deduction, it can't replace us, but can serve better. Our imperfections make us humans.
When it comes to AI serving us, in the very near future, AI will probably be able to do most of the things a skilled software engineer can do today. It will be able to work hard and long hours to send productivity to unprecedented levels. It can work out problems and come up with innovative ideas.
So even the thinking that tech company employees have to do to innovate can be done by artificial intelligence.
This means the job of a software engineer is going to chang. They may no longer need to write simple lines of code. If you're a programmer there's no need to panic. It's not going to take your job but you're going to have a different role to play in the same thing. The software engineer could become like a manager of the AI tools, check the AI is working properly and come up with better ways to use its output. All workers from different industries will likely need to learn new skills to adapt to this evolving role in work life.
But not everyone feels the same about this outcome. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, says there is a good chance AI could take half of all entry level office jobs within 5 years. This could lead to a high unemployment rate very fast.
As AI continues to evolve, employees will continue to have to develop new ways to collaborate and together use AI in an intelligent and fair manner. We are living in a rapidly changing society, and we should all be preparing, because the rate of change is actually going to accelerate.