Google CEO Sundar Pichai says AI won’t replace human jobs but OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever has a different story to tell

OpenAI

While Google CEO Sundar Pichai has repeatedly reassured the public that AI will not replace human jobs, OpenAI’s co-founder Ilya Sutskever isn’t so sure.

Speaking to graduates at the University of Toronto, Sutskever painted a far more dramatic picture of what AI could mean for the future of work. In his convocation address, he said, “AI is unprecedented and extreme,” and warned that the technology is only getting started. “Today’s AI is better than humans at some things, and worse at many others,” he noted — but that balance, he said, is bound to change.

Sutskever’s main argument? The human brain is a biological computer, and if we’ve built digital computers, there’s no reason they can’t eventually do everything we can. “It’s only a matter of time,” he said, suggesting that AI will one day match — or surpass — human abilities across the board.

He estimated that this tipping point could arrive in three, five, or ten years. When it does, the implications could be massive. “What will humans do when machines can do it all?” he asked. From scientific breakthroughs to full-scale automation, Sutskever believes we’re heading into a period where progress may accelerate beyond anything we’ve seen before.

That future, he emphasized, is not optional. “Whether you like it or not, your life is going to be affected by AI to a great extent,” he said.

But it wasn’t all warnings and predictions. Sutskever also offered some classic graduation wisdom. He encouraged students to stop dwelling on past failures and focus instead on taking the next best step. “Things are the way they are,” he said. “So, what’s the next best thing you can do?”

His talk stood in sharp contrast to the more optimistic tone tech leaders like Pichai have been striking — highlighting a growing divide in how Silicon Valley is thinking about AI’s role in shaping our future.