‘Learn AI tools, coding won’t guarantee jobs’: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tells Gen Z

In an interview on the Stratechery podcast hosted by Ben Thompson, Altman said the once-obvious choice of learning coding after graduation is now being replaced by mastering AI tools in the rapidly evolving technology landscape.

“The obvious tactical thing is just get really good at using AI tools,” Altman said, as quoted by the Financial Times.

“Like when I was graduating as a senior from high school, the obvious tactical thing was to get really good at coding, and this is the new version of that,” he added.

Earlier, Microsoft India and South Asia president Puneet Chandok said AI will “unbundle” operational tasks but emphasised that continuous skilling will be essential for survival in the evolving job market.

Speaking at the AI Impact Summit 2026 in New Delhi, Chandok stressed the urgent need for individuals to learn and adapt to AI-driven changes.

“AI won’t kill jobs, it will unbundle jobs. AI will unbundle transactional tasks that seem like work but are not really value adding,” he said.

He added that as AI reshapes job roles, workers must strengthen their skill sets to remain relevant.

“But when AI will unbundle our tasks, we would need to bundle ourselves much better so skilling will be the only oxygen mask. This is where it’s headed. If we are not learning AI every day, we will be redundant,” Chandok warned.

Reflecting a similar spirit day ago, IBM Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Arvind Krishna had stressed on upskilling though he predicted some job losses to be paired with creation of new opportunities.

In an interview with Bloomberg, Krishna said call centre-type roles are likely to be among the most impacted as AI adoption accelerates.

“I think 50 per cent of call centre jobs, simple document-matching jobs, or people working on internal help desks such as IT and HR will go away,” Krishna said.

“There is going to be some job displacement. I think 5 to 10 per cent job displacement is likely,” he added.

Krishna stressed that companies now have a responsibility to reskill affected employees.

“The onus is on us to make sure we can give them other skills—upskilling or reskilling—so that they can move into productive jobs,” he said.

“That does not count the increase in jobs. There is going to be much more hiring and much higher productivity, but there will be some displacement,” the IBM CEO added.