Sam Altman Warns AI Will Replace Wide Swaths of Jobs, Urges 5.7 Million-Strong Startup Push
Updated
Updated · Fortune · Oct 28
Sam Altman Warns AI Will Replace Wide Swaths of Jobs, Urges 5.7 Million-Strong Startup Push
3 articles · Updated · Fortune · Oct 28
Summary
Altman told Stanford business students that AI will do huge numbers of tasks better, cheaper and faster, leaving “wide swaths” of today’s jobs entirely handled by AI.
He said the shift may unfold more slowly than many expect, but criticized MBA students for chasing what was “cool five years ago” instead of building new AI-native businesses.
OpenAI’s chief argued the disruption creates a rare opening for ambitious founders, saying companies built on top of AI could become bigger and more important than OpenAI itself.
U.S. entrepreneurship is already rising: Americans filed 5.7 million business applications in 2025, the highest annual total in the 20 years the Census Bureau has tracked.
Alexis Ohanian and Mark Cuban have made similar arguments, saying startups built with AI from day one have an execution edge over incumbents trying to retrofit the technology.