this post was submitted on 26 May 2026
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Sam Altman says OpenAI wants to sell intelligence like a utility

During a recent appearance at BlackRock in Washington, D.C., OpenAI's Sam Altman, shared his vision for the future of AI. At one point saying, “We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.”

Altman was describing a world where AI becomes a foundational infrastructure, something woven into everyday life so deeply that consumers and businesses simply “plug into” it the same way they rely on electricity, Wi-Fi or running water.

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[–] zd9@lemmy.world 19 points 3 days ago (7 children)

Sorry, but you're wrong. I'm gonna get the downvotes because everyone loves to hate on AI, but it's true. There are many many entry level software jobs that can get replaced right now. I do AI research for climate stuff and all of my colleagues feel the same way. Yall can live in a different reality if it makes you feel better, but it's not the truth. That doesn't mean it's not a form of a bubble or at the peak of the hype cycle, though. Both things are true.

From a wealthy elite perspective, it's the desire of the ultimate triumph of Capital over Labor, and that's terrifying as being on the Labor side.

[–] badgermurphy@lemmy.world 20 points 3 days ago (2 children)

You are right that it can do some entry level jobs, but the system as it is requires those jobs to exist. There is no such thing as a senior developer that was not previously a junior developer.

I believe that is where the collapse will happen. There will be a sucking black hole of demand for senior talent and almost no talent pool. Add on to that the fact that the sources for LLMs' ability to code (stack overflow, countless private forums, Reddit, etc) have been destroyed by those LLMs. How will they learn anything new?

I don't fundamentally want the technology to fail, but it seems to ravenously consume everything, even the knowledge and manpower bases that were used to build and train it.

[–] cmbabul@slrpnk.net 8 points 3 days ago

This is actually one of the bigger things overall, this level of disruption they hype, even if you buy the optimistic side of what can be delivered will either eventually lead to some sort of universal basic income for everyone(sus) or millions of people without income and no one able to replace the people who’s knowledge and experience are needed to correct mistakes that will for sure happen even if the models/agents get much better than they are forecasted to be. There’s more but I think the point is made.

[–] SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works 3 points 3 days ago (1 children)

It’s almost like people don’t realize that epistemologies have a time dimension that needs to be sustained to persist.

That epistemologies have a body, which is human behaviour.

The fuckin’ Morlocks are trying to conjure the singularity by a massive and rapid capture of the function of those epistemologies, in code that is now commodified and alienated, before their “only disrupt” ethos pulls the technological rug from under them and us completely.

[–] Jaycifer@piefed.social 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

What do you mean when you use the word “epistemologies” in this context?

[–] SreudianFlip@sh.itjust.works 4 points 3 days ago

I'm using it generally, to refer to skills, knowledge, and understanding of industries and other economic topics, per the thread. We are seeing disrupted chains of knowledge and experience, what amounts to an abdication of tradition, and a surrender of economic power. These specific epistemological systems are the fabric of civilization.

[–] k0e3@lemmy.ca 14 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, I'm a translator and the jobscape has completely changed. Basic shit can be done on a "eh, it's good enough" level so I stopped getting such job offers. The only thing I get now are technical work or something more "human" required like novels, game localization, other such works of art. I think it would be really hard right now for anyone new to find clients because most people are OK with just "OK."

I made a Lemmy community for translators who like to provide help and also add a bit of human touch to the process.

Interpreting is still in demand, I feel, because people still like hearing natural-sounding speech (AI is getting there but it's still kinda creepy) and it still mixes up a lot of information. Also, people don't speak with perfect grammar. They make mistakes, use filler words/sounds, trace back, mix languages... All of which confuse AI—for now. Also language pairs like English and Japanese can be a bit tricky because Japanese sentences tend to run on forever and also kinda go backwards compared to English (JA: reason then conclusion; EN: conclusion then reason, for example) which again throws off AI.

[–] realitista@lemmus.org 4 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Yeah if something is important enough that I need an interpreter instead of just fumbling through it with my bad second language skills, it will be a human. Things like that require understanding nuance and context and being able to say "sorry I didn't get that" so that they get it right.

[–] k0e3@lemmy.ca 4 points 3 days ago

Nice. If you need Japanese-English, you know where to find me lol hashtaghustleculture

[–] Handsomest_Robot@quokk.au 9 points 3 days ago (1 children)

I can hate AI and acknowledge that you're correct.

[–] zd9@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago

Thank you. Also I can almost guarantee you don't actually hate AI. You probably hate these LLMs used by OpenAI and the like, am I right?

What is there to hate about something like GraphCast, AlphaFold, or reinforcement learning for fusion research? (Funnily enough those are all from DeepMind, where my mentor actually works at now)

[–] pivot_root@lemmy.world 6 points 3 days ago (2 children)

How capable are LLMs at replacing software jobs above an entry-level grade? I imagine giving a gaggle of fresh grads the entirety of human knowledge and asking them to create software would create something, but I don't imagine the outcome would be high enough quality to have a net positive in productivity after someone has to spend the next 5 years adding to or changing it.

[–] SuperUserDO@piefed.ca 6 points 3 days ago (1 children)

So let's talk about the Anthropic models, cause that's what I'm playing with on the company dime.

Wire up a few mcp configs (don't even start me on the inherent risks associated with current MCP permissions model...) and give it a run book and it's great at generating reports for me about stuff I kinda care about.

Could if replace an entry level grad? Sure. Will that company have all kinds of strange problems - hell yes. Think of it as an intern. You can give it all the crappy intern tasks while you make coffee. Only the intern improves when you give feedback...

[–] vividspecter@aussie.zone 7 points 3 days ago (1 children)

Also, I wonder what happens to these companies in the future when there are no senior developers anymore, because nobody hires junior developers to train up.

[–] SuperUserDO@piefed.ca 4 points 3 days ago

Cobol. We have experienced this problem happening organically with Cobol developers. The worlds financial infrastructure runs on Cobol and anyone who had skills in this language can pick the company they want to work at.

[–] Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 2 points 3 days ago* (last edited 3 days ago)

they seem to be trying to do that, prefer to hire only senior/ or have multi-year experience in the field. biotech is pretty much at that level already, preferred candidates are the ones with GRAD degrees, or lower wage outsourced workers(visa holders) or somehow if you are lucky while getting a degree already have 2-4years experience working in a lab volunteer not as a labtech. or biotech/ health adjacent like CLS is gatekept by the limited the amount of schools that teach this graduate program(EVERYONE wants to bumrush cali to apply to those programs, so competitive)

After several attempts ai still cannot fix a bug in a set top box without introducing 3 other bugs and about 7 loops of extra, untested complexity doing fuck knows what

[–] realitista@lemmus.org 1 points 3 days ago

Congrats this is the first realistic comment about AI I've seen not get down voted to hell.