AI Interns And The Future For Gen Z Workers
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Entry level jobs as we know them could soon be a thing of the past. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman states that AI can now effectively perform the tasks of junior level employees, and its capabilities are expected to improve significantly in the coming months.
He predicted that AI will eventually rival the skills of even an experienced engineer, all while being uniquely capable of operating continuously for days on end without breaks.
The Evolving Power of AI in the Workplace
“Today [AI] is like an intern that can work for a couple of hours but at some point it’ll be like an experienced software engineer that can work for a couple of days,” Altman told a panel this week alongside Snowflake CEO Sridhar Ramaswamy at Snowflake Summit 2025.
Altman added that in the next year, we could see AI autonomously solving complex business problems.
“I would bet next year that in some limited cases, at least in some small ways, we start to see agents that can help us discover new knowledge, or can figure out solutions to business problems that are very non trivial," he said.
This bold prediction has been echoed by other tech CEOs, including Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.
AI: A Job Displacer or a Tool for the Prepared?
Huang warned that those who hesitate to embrace AI may find themselves at a disadvantage. “You’re not going to lose your job to an AI, but you’re going to lose your job to someone who uses AI," he said at last month's Milken Institute conference.
Gen Z and AI: A New Kind of Collaboration
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Generative AI is poised to make entry level jobs obsolete just as Generation Z is establishing its place in the workforce. However, this hasn't stopped Gen Z from embracing the technology.
A recent Resume survey found that while one in 10 workers reported using ChatGPT regularly, Gen Z workers were twice as likely to use the tool. The same study revealed that the vast majority of workers at any age see ChatGPT as a helpful tool. Interestingly, over half of Gen Z workers considered it equivalent to another co worker or assistant, compared to 40% of millennials and 35% of older generations.
Altman has previously commented on the generational differences in AI usage:
“[It’s a] gross oversimplification, but like older people use ChatGPT as a Google replacement. Maybe people in their twenties and thirties use it as like a life advisor, and then, like people in college use it as an operating system,” he said at Sequoia Capital’s AI Ascent event in May.
Even as Gen Z embraces AI, some tech leaders are sounding alarm bells about the economic fallout of an AI driven job market. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently told Axios that AI could wipe out half of all entry level white collar jobs, potentially causing unemployment to skyrocket by 10% to 20%.
Understanding and Using ChatGPT
OpenAI is the creator of ChatGPT, a revolutionary chatbot AI that, since its release in 2022, has quickly become one of the most advanced and widely used AI tools globally.
Powered by OpenAI’s latest model, GPT-4o, ChatGPT can assist with numerous tasks, such as planning your weekend or writing a term paper. It supports everything from real time speech interaction to multimodal content creation, and many of its most powerful features are available for free.
If you're curious, be sure to check out guidance on how to use ChatGPT, as well as tips to get the most out of ChatGPT.
