AI might be a lot more intelligent than humans in the coming years, but it might not necessarily lead to humans being sidelined by the new technology.
This surprisingly optimistic take comes from Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and the GPT-5 model. In a recent discussion, Altman offered a counterintuitive perspective on humanity’s relationship with increasingly powerful AI systems, arguing that our evolutionary wiring to care about other people—rather than machines—will keep humans at the center of their own story, regardless of how intelligent AI becomes.
“One reason I’m actually quite optimistic about how the future’s going to feel to us is people are obsessed with other people and they don’t care that much about technology,” Altman explained. He pointed to GPT-5 as an example, describing it as “unbelievably smart from an IQ perspective, and as you mentioned, pretty good from an EQ perspective. Surprisingly good.”
The OpenAI chief highlighted just how dramatically AI capabilities have advanced, noting that “GPT-5 is beating humans at the most difficult intellectual competitions we have in area after area, after area.” He cited a recent programming competition where “no human had ever gotten every problem right. Our model did it. This is unimaginable a couple of years ago. We’ve seen it in math, all kinds of science, all this other stuff.”
Yet despite these remarkable achievements, Altman observed something telling about human nature: “no one cares. And I think that’s great. I really do.” He explained that competitive programmers and mathematicians “are still going to compete next year. They really care about how they do relative to those other people. They don’t care at all that the AI is going to absolutely steamroll them in terms of the score.”
To illustrate his point about human preferences for human achievement, Altman drew a vivid comparison using a performance example: “The performance at the start here was so beautiful. It really was moving and wonderful. If that had been done by robots, even if the music sounded exactly the same, we wouldn’t have cared. It would just not have had any of the emotional resonance.”
This observation led Altman to his central thesis: “We are so wired to care about other people and not to care about machines that we’ll be happy that these machines are doing stuff for us and making the world richer and discovering new science and curing disease and whatever, but they will not be the center of the story. That’s my guess.”
Altman’s perspective offers a refreshing counterpoint to widespread fears about AI displacement and existential risk. His argument taps into fundamental aspects of human psychology—our inherent social nature and preference for human connection over technological achievement. This view aligns with observable trends in entertainment, sports, and creative fields, where audiences consistently prefer human performers and competitors despite the existence of superior technological alternatives. The continued popularity of live music over perfectly produced recordings, the enduring appeal of human athletes despite the existence of faster machines, and the preference for human-created art all support Altman’s thesis that emotional resonance trumps raw capability in capturing human attention and care.