OpenAI chairman reveals AI erodes his identity as a programmer

OpenAI Chairman Bret Taylor revealed that artificial intelligence is fundamentally disrupting his professional identity and sense of self-worth as a programmer. His candid admission highlights the psychological toll AI is taking on tech leaders who built their careers on skills now being automated away.

What they’re saying: Taylor expressed deep anxiety about AI’s impact on his core professional identity during a recent podcast appearance.
• “The thing I self-identify with is just, like, being obviated by this technology,” Taylor said on the “Acquired” podcast.
• “You’re going to have this period of transition where it’s saying, like, ‘How I’ve come to identify my own worth, either as a person or as an employee, has been disrupted.’ That’s very uncomfortable. And that transition isn’t always easy,” the chairman declared.

The big picture: Taylor’s concerns reflect a broader pattern of ambivalence among OpenAI’s leadership about their own technology’s implications.
• CEO Sam Altman frequently expresses fear about the technology he’s developing, while a longstanding investor has reportedly shown signs of psychological distress.
• This internal anxiety contrasts sharply with OpenAI’s public positioning as an AI leader poised to become “the richest startup in history.”

Why this matters: The psychological impact on tech professionals may be overstated given recent AI performance limitations and potential strategic motivations.
• OpenAI’s latest model disappointed users, particularly software engineers and programmers who found its coding abilities inferior to earlier versions.
• Taylor’s fears may serve strategic purposes, as he recently founded Sierra, a $4.5 billion AI startup that depends on convincing companies to outsource entire departments to AI automation.

The skeptical view: Tech policy experts suggest OpenAI leaders use fear-mongering as a sales and regulatory strategy.
• Altman has repeatedly played up AI dangers to attract investors and influence lawmakers, including a March 2023 podcast appearance weeks before securing $300 million in funding.
• “It’s such an irony seeing a posture about the concern of harms by people who are rapidly releasing, into commercial use, the system responsible for those very harms,” tech policy researcher Sarah Myers West observed.

What’s next: Taylor’s Sierra startup aims to convince companies like Casper Sleep and ADT to replace human customer service departments with AI agents, creating dependent client relationships that could expand AI’s displacement of human workers beyond programming roles.