After saying millions of jobs will be wiped off, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says coders are about to get busier than ever: The world has …

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman believes software developers could become busier than ever despite the rapid growth of artificial intelligence (AI). Speaking on a 45-minute podcast with Matthew Berman, Altman said AI has changed how programmers work but has not reduced the need for coding. Instead, he argued, the world wants far more software than people had expected. “Coders are never going to be busier than they've been and coders are never going to have more of an impact and make more money,” Altman said, explaining why AI has not led to the decline in coding work that many had predicted.Why AI has not killed coding jobsDuring the podcast, Matthew Berman asked Sam Altman why programmers had not seen their jobs disappear as AI tools became capable of writing more code. Altman said the initial reaction to AI's coding abilities was that there would be less need for human programmers. However, he said, demand for software has turned out to be much greater than expected.“The world actually had demand for just way more software than any of us thought at the time,” Altman said.According to him, AI has changed the nature of coding work rather than eliminated the need for it. As AI tools make it easier to build software, developers can take on more projects and work on tasks that were previously difficult or too time-consuming.He also pointed out that people had been certain, just six or 12 months earlier, that AI would reduce the need for coders.Sam Altman says AI could change other professions tooDuring the podcast, Sam Altman also discussed whether the same pattern could emerge in mathematics, where AI is increasingly being used to solve complex problems. He said it was still unclear whether AI would create greater demand for mathematicians in the same way it had for software developers. However, he suggested that the nature of their work could change.“Maybe we're not going to discover new math theorems or prove them in an unaided way anymore,” Altman said.He added that mathematicians could focus more on understanding new ideas, explaining them clearly and developing proofs that people can follow. Altman said there could be other tasks that mathematicians would be able to perform better with AI, although he was unsure whether this would lead to more jobs overall.The discussion also touched on the expectation that AI would reduce the amount of work people need to do. Altman said the opposite appears to be happening so far, as people continue to find more things they want to accomplish with new technology.“I think we probably will find that there's a lot of other things that mathematicians do that we really want people to do and they can do those much better,” he said.He added that technology should ideally allow people to work less and have more time for other parts of their lives. However, he noted that people often use the time saved by technology to take on more work.“I always hope that people get to work a little bit less. I get be a little bit less busy and kind of more time for everything else in their life,” Altman said.“But man, does it sure seem like we're good at wanting more out of life and wanting more out of the world and making ourselves busier.”You use AI every day. Now get your AI Quotient. Take the AIQ test.