Sam Altman: College Grads Are the Future in an AI-Driven World

Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, has expressed confidence that college graduates will adapt well to the sweeping changes brought by artificial intelligence, suggesting that young people entering the workforce today are uniquely positioned to thrive in this new era. In a recent appearance on Cleo Abram’s "Huge Conversations" YouTube show, Altman said he is less concerned about the impact of AI on 22-year-olds than on older employees who may resist retraining or adapting to new ways of working. “I’m more worried about what it means not for the 22-year-old, but for the 62-year-old that doesn’t want to go retrain or rescale or whatever the politicians call it that no one actually wants,” Altman said. He believes that while AI will inevitably eliminate certain jobs, younger generations are more flexible, open-minded, and capable of embracing transformation. Altman described the current moment as one of extraordinary opportunity. “If I were 22 right now and graduating college, I would feel like the luckiest kid in all of history,” he said. He emphasized that AI is enabling unprecedented possibilities—such as launching a one-person company that could grow into a billion-dollar enterprise—while also creating space for bold innovation and meaningful contributions to society. Looking further ahead, Altman speculated that by 2035, today’s college graduates might be pursuing careers far beyond what we can currently imagine. “In 2035, that graduating college student, if they still go to college at all, could very well be leaving on a mission to explore the solar system on a spaceship in some kind of completely new, exciting, super well-paid, super interesting job,” he said. He added with a touch of humor, “and feeling so bad for you and I that we had to do this kind of really boring old kind of work and everything is just better.” His optimistic outlook stands in contrast to concerns raised by other tech leaders. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently warned that AI could displace up to half of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years, calling it a potential societal crisis that the industry and policymakers are not adequately preparing for. Despite these differing views, Altman remains convinced that the long-term trajectory of AI will unlock transformative progress—making the future not just more efficient, but more exciting and fulfilling for those ready to embrace it.