Sam Altman: keeping remote work was a big mistake – 05/12/2023 – Tech

The adoption of remote work on a large scale and permanently was one of the worst mistakes of the technology industry, evaluates the chief executive of the startup that created ChatGPT OpenAI, Sam Altman.

“Startups thought they didn’t need to have their team together to stay creative. I would say that experiment is over and companies don’t have enough technology for teams to work from home forever, especially in startups,” Altman said.

The chief executive behind ChatGPT discussed the future of artificial intelligence (AI) and the role of technological advancement in the quest for sustainable development at an event by payments startup Stripe. The company was founded by the president of the non-profit arm of OpenAI, Greck Brockman, who left fintech in 2015.

Altman reckons that start-up businesses need more face-to-face time than other companies. “The more fragile and nuanced a set of ideas is, the more group time is required.”

Executives from several companies have asked their employees to return to work in person. At the forefront of this movement are Bob Iger of Disney, Howard Schultz of Starbucks and Robert Thomson of News Corp, owner of economic publication Dow Jones and Fox News.

Elon Musk, when he took over Twitter in November, also ended the company’s work-from-home policy. Musk is an advocate of a 70- to 80-hour work week.

Clearlink chief executive James Clarke says unsupervised remote workers can use AI to buy time and take on multiple jobs. The statement was part of a leaked internal Clearlink video.

In a survey by the think tank Pew Research Center released in April, 56% of respondents believe that working from home helps them finish work and meet deadlines. Another 37% said that this model neither helps nor hinders. The study was first reported in Fortune magazine.

The platform that stores GitHub programming codes permanently maintained remote work after the pandemic, the company’s chief executive, Thomas Dohmke, told the report by Sheet during the Web Summit in Rio. Freedom encourages creativity, according to Dohmke.

At Meta, employees concerned about the possibility of staff cuts complain of leaders who moved to other countries, after the adoption of the home office, as reported by the New York Times.

IBM Chief Executive Arvind Krishna has said the company will stop hiring people for jobs that could be replaced by artificial intelligence in coming years. Company projections indicate that the decision could close 7,800 vacancies in five years.

Krishna also said that one can be just as productive working from home, but it gets in the way of career advancement.