Asger Risom
In a recent podcast discussion, he outlined three fields where automation is accelerating — and where workers may soon feel the impact.
AI systems are advancing fast enough to reshape entire professions, according to a senior OpenAI product leader. In a recent podcast discussion, he outlined three fields where automation is accelerating — and where workers may soon feel the impact.
His comments arrive as companies across sectors test how far large language models can go in handling routine knowledge work.
Life sciences first
On the “Unsupervised Learning” podcast, Olivier Godement, OpenAI’s head of product for business offerings, said he expects major shifts in the life-sciences sector. Pharmaceutical firms aim to design new drugs, he explained, but a significant share of that process involves administrative complexity.
“The time it takes from once you lock the recipe of a drug to having that drug on the market is months, sometimes years,” he noted, adding that AI models are increasingly capable of aggregating and analyzing the various documents that slow the pipeline.
Godement, who joined OpenAI in 2023 after eight years at Stripe, works with companies including Amgen and believes that this admin-heavy phase is ripe for automation.
Coding under pressure
He also pointed to software engineering as another field moving toward automated support. Although he stressed that tech isn’t yet at the point of replacing developers outright, he suggested the trajectory is clear.
“The automation is probably not yet at the level of automating completely the job of a software engineer, but I think we have a line of sight essentially to get there,” he said.
The comments echo a tense debate within the tech industry, where AI-assisted coding has rapidly become standard. Business Insider previously noted an Indeed analysis from October showing that software engineers, QA engineers, product managers and project managers were among the roles most affected by layoffs and restructuring.
Customer-facing roles next
The third area Godement flagged was customer service and sales. He cited collaborations with US telecom provider T-Mobile to demonstrate how well automated systems are already performing.
“We’re starting to achieve fairly good results in terms of quality at a meaningful scale,” he said, predicting that the volume of reliably automated tasks “will probably” surprise people within a year or two.
Wider warnings
Other AI leaders have issued similar alerts about the pace of change. In a June interview, Geoffrey Hinton — often called the “Godfather of AI” — said that while manual trades remain relatively safe for now, the outlook for routine intellectual labor is stark.
“For mundane intellectual labor, AI is just going to replace everybody,” Hinton said, adding that he would be “terrified” to work in a call center. He identified paralegals as especially exposed.
As model capabilities expand, experts suggest the boundary between assistance and full automation may narrow rapidly — leaving some professions fundamentally transformed.
Sources: Unsupervised Learning podcast, Business Insider
