Sam Altman wants an AI to replace him as OpenAI CEO: ‘Shame on me if OpenAI isn’t the first…’

​Ever since the rollout of ChatGPT in late 2022, there has been a growing fear about AI taking away current jobs. There have been various reports since then outlining which jobs are most at risk, and one of them that usually remains relatively safe is that of the CEO.

​However, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in a recent interaction, suggested that he wants the ChatGPT maker to be the first company to have an AI as the CEO.

​While speaking on the “Conversations with Tyler” podcast, Altman said, “Shame on me if OpenAI is not the first big company run by an AI CEO.”

​“I find this a very interesting thought experiment of what would have to happen for an AI CEO to be able to do a much, much better job of running OpenAI than me, which clearly will happen someday. But how can we accelerate that?” he added.

​While Altman admitted that AI running a whole company is still some time away, he suggested that the technology could be just single-digit years away before it is capable of running full departments.

​Altman outlined the challenge for AI to really take over as CEO of companies or whole departments, suggesting that humans have more trust in other humans than a machine, even if it is irrational to do so.

​“People have a great deal higher trust in other people over AI, even if they shouldn’t, even if that’s irrational. You know, the AI doctor is better, but you want the human whatever. So, I think it may take much longer for society to get really comfortable with this and for people in an organization to get really comfortable with this,” he added.

​What would life after OpenAI look like for Altman?

​This isn’t the first time that Altman has talked about AI taking over his job as CEO. He had also talked about this in an earlier conversation with Axel Springer CEO Mathias Döpfner, where he said, “It doesn’t scare me, it doesn’t make me sad. It’s just like I did this one thing that has been automated, and I wanted it to be automated, and that’s kind of what we’re doing.”

​On what life would look like after OpenAI for him, Altman had said, “I have a farm that I live on some of the time and I really love it, and it sounds like a wonderful change of pace… You are not only enjoying the farm, you are really participating in working there or doing things in the nature.”