Sam Altman says OpenAI wants to sell intelligence like a utility
During a recent appearance at BlackRock in Washington, D.C., OpenAI’s Sam Altman, shared his vision for the future of AI. At one point saying, “We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter.”
Altman was describing a world where AI becomes a foundational infrastructure, something woven into everyday life so deeply that consumers and businesses simply “plug into” it the same way they rely on electricity, Wi-Fi or running water.
Yeah, I’m a translator and the jobscape has completely changed. Basic shit can be done on a “eh, it’s good enough” level so I stopped getting such job offers. The only thing I get now are technical work or something more “human” required like novels, game localization, other such works of art. I think it would be really hard right now for anyone new to find clients because most people are OK with just “OK.”
I made a Lemmy community for translators who like to provide help and also add a bit of human touch to the process.
Interpreting is still in demand, I feel, because people still like hearing natural-sounding speech (AI is getting there but it’s still kinda creepy) and it still mixes up a lot of information. Also, people don’t speak with perfect grammar. They make mistakes, use filler words/sounds, trace back, mix languages… All of which confuse AI—for now. Also language pairs like English and Japanese can be a bit tricky because Japanese sentences tend to run on forever and also kinda go backwards compared to English (JA: reason then conclusion; EN: conclusion then reason, for example) which again throws off AI.
Yeah if something is important enough that I need an interpreter instead of just fumbling through it with my bad second language skills, it will be a human. Things like that require understanding nuance and context and being able to say “sorry I didn’t get that” so that they get it right.