Sam Altman Says AI and Humanoid Robots Will Soon Change Jobs Forever

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has offered a stark but fascinating glimpse into the future of work and technology, warning that both artificial intelligence and humanoid robots are poised to dramatically change the global job market. While speaking with Bloomberg’s Emily Chang on The Circuit, Altman emphasised the accelerating pace of change brought by AI innovation.

“If you look at the history of the world, technological-driven job change, when one class of jobs goes away and another one pops up, that’s very consistent, it’s punctuated. But that’s just been happening for a long time. And the thing that is different this time is just the rate with which it looks like it will happen,” Altman said during the interview.

While much of the conversation focused on AI’s rapid growth, Altman also pointed to a future that includes humanoid robots taking on tasks traditionally done by humans. “I don’t think the world has really had the humanoid robots moment yet, and I don’t think that’s very far away […] What happens when the humanoid robots get here? I mean, obviously do a lot of jobs,” he added.

Altman remains hopeful about AI’s broader impact, especially in the realm of science. “I think 2025 will be a world where we have agents do a lot of work, things we already know how to do. I’m hopeful that 2026 will be a big year of new scientific progress,” he said.

A significant portion of the discussion revolved around the ambitious Stargate Project, a $500 billion AI infrastructure initiative co-led by OpenAI, Microsoft, Nvidia, Oracle, Arm, Softbank, and others. Described by Altman as “a complex supply chain with a lot of partners and obviously a lot of capital,” the Stargate Project aims to create a national AI infrastructure backbone. The first data center, under construction in Texas, is set to power OpenAI’s next-generation models.

The need for more computational power has been highlighted by recent spikes in demand—particularly for AI-generated content like Ghibli-style images. “Making an image is not a low compute task… we had to borrow compute capacity from research,” Altman admitted.

Despite OpenAI’s close ties with Microsoft, Altman acknowledged the limitations. “We do get a lot of great stuff from Microsoft but I think this is more than any one company can deliver,” he said.

Altman also addressed competition in the AI space, particularly Chinese startup DeepSeek, which recently made waves with claims of more cost-efficient large language models. “I think the DeepSeek team is very talented and did a lot of good things. I don’t think they figured out something way more efficient than what we figured out,” Altman commented.

On the financial front, Altman noted OpenAI’s success hinges on continued user engagement. “We are definitely doing something unprecedented. But, it doesn’t mean something can’t go wrong,” he said, while stressing the importance of access to premium infrastructure and advanced algorithms.

When asked about President Donald Trump’s impact on AI policy, Altman expressed optimism: “I think he [Trump] will get to make some of the most important decisions anyone in the world has gotten to make related to AI […] One thing that’s really impressed me about President Trump is his ability to understand the whole industry and all the changes so quickly.”