OpenAI hires humans to study a future where AI automates their jobs

Humans are continuously improving AI, but what if AI advances the AI? That seems to be in work now. As per a report by Business Insider, OpenAI is reportedly hiring researchers to study what happens when AI systems become capable of improving future AI systems largely on their own. And yes, the irony is difficult to ignore. Also Read: 8 ChatGPT prompts every working professional should know

The AI giant is essentially hiring humans to prepare for a future where some technical and research jobs may eventually need fewer humans.  Also Read: Apple Watch health tracking could get better with watchOS 27; But Health Coach may get delayes

OpenAI Hiring: What exactly is AI giant hiring for? 

According to reports, OpenAI recently posted a new role under its Preparedness safety team focused on studying “recursive self-improvement” in AI systems. In simple words, this refers to AI systems building smarter versions of themselves without relying heavily on human engineers every step of the way. The job listing reportedly offers a salary package ranging between $295,000 and $445,000. But the interesting part is not the salary. The role involves preparing for problems that, as OpenAI reportedly describes, “might exist in the future, but might not exist now.”

Meanwhile, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said at a Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) conference that back in 2025, OpenAI wanted to build an “automated AI research intern” capable of assisting large-scale AI work. However, the bigger goal is eventually reaching a “true automated AI researcher” within the next few years. At the same time, Altman also admitted that the company could “totally fail” at achieving that target.

Still, the direction feels fairly clear – AI companies are trying to automate not just repetitive office work, but increasingly technical research and engineering tasks too. 

AI and jobs

Interestingly, Altman recently admitted that his earlier predictions around AI replacing white-collar jobs were probably too aggressive. Speaking at an event in Australia, he said, “I’m delighted to be wrong about this, ‌I ⁠thought there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by ⁠now than has actually happened. I don’t think we’re going to have the kind of jobs apocalypse that some of the companies in our space advocate or talk about.”

According to Altman, one thing AI still struggles to replace is human interaction itself. He even revealed that after trying AI-generated responses for Slack and emails, he eventually returned to replying personally in some cases because people still care deeply about genuine human communication.

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So, are AI research jobs disappearing tomorrow? Not really. At least not yet. Right now, companies still need massive human teams to build, supervise, train, evaluate, and align these systems. But the industry is clearly preparing for a future where AI contributes much more heavily to its own development process.