#24 trendingSam Altman
Sam Altman's advice to young workers: Stop chasing 'what was cool five years ago' and bet on AI's new opportunities
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has a blunt message for people starting their careers as artificial intelligence reshapes the job market: don’t follow the old playbook. In an interview at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, Altman said young workers have a rare chance to come out ahead if they are willing to try something new, and he singled out MBA students for doing the opposite.
“My chronic disappointment with MBA students is that they always want to go do the thing that was cool five years ago rather than try something new,” Altman said, according to Fortune. “I think this is a great time to go do the new thing.”
Where Altman said it
The remarks came during a “View From The Top” interview at Stanford GSB conducted by MBA student Claudia Chen, Moneycontrol reported. Fortune, which first reported the comments on Oct. 28, described the interview as taking place the previous week. The session has been posted on the business school’s YouTube channel.
What Altman told young workers
Altman’s core argument is that periods of upheaval favor newcomers. “If you’re heading into the world right now to work on something, I think you want to start your career at a time of the greatest change, when the playing field is most open,” he told the Stanford audience, per Fortune.
He added: “I think people with high potential, drive, ideas, a new way of looking at things, and new skills tend to do relatively well when the ground is shaking the most.”
Altman also pointed young people toward building businesses rather than only competing for existing jobs. “There are many companies that can be built on top of the technology OpenAI has put out into the world that will be much bigger and, I hope, more important than OpenAI,” he said.
The warning about jobs
The advice came alongside a sober view of what AI will do to work. “It’s totally true that huge numbers of tasks that people do today will be done better, cheaper, and faster by AI—and completely differently,” Altman said, according to Fortune.
He said “wide swaths” of current jobs, at least as they are done today, will be handled entirely by AI. But he also cautioned that the shift will not happen as quickly as many people expect, Fortune and Moneycontrol reported, and said that slower transition could open the door to new businesses.
Why it matters
Altman’s comments land at a moment when entry-level workers are anxious about how AI will affect hiring. They also fit a broader trend Fortune highlighted: Americans filed 5.7 million applications to start new businesses in 2025, the highest annual total in the two decades the Census Bureau has tracked the data.
Altman speaks from experience. Fortune noted that he dropped out of Stanford in 2005 to cofound Loopt, a location-based social networking startup that was later acquired, and served as president of startup accelerator Y Combinator from 2014 to 2019.
He is not alone in the view. Fortune pointed to Reddit cofounder Alexis Ohanian, who has argued that companies founded in the AI age have a “default advantage,” and to Mark Cuban, who has said entrepreneurs who don’t use AI to move faster are “at a disadvantage.”
FAQ
What is Sam Altman’s advice for young workers?
Start your career where change is happening fastest, try new ideas instead of what was fashionable a few years ago, and consider building businesses on top of new AI tools.
Did Altman say AI will take jobs?
He said AI will do huge numbers of today’s tasks better, cheaper and faster, and that “wide swaths” of jobs as currently done will be handled by AI, but that the change will come more slowly than many expect.
Why did he criticize MBA students?
He said his “chronic disappointment” is that they tend to pursue the thing “that was cool five years ago” rather than something new.
This article is for general information and is not career or financial advice.