Uber cofounder says human workers will be extremely ‘valuable’ until super AGI steps into the picture: ‘That’s my white pill’
Business leaders are split on if AI will trigger a jobs armageddon or usher in “super interesting” gigs of the future. And Uber cofounder Travis Kalanick believes the veil is finally lifting on the reality of tech-driven workplace disruption: there’s “another side” to the story, where human employees are more powerful than ever before.
“Until we get super [artificial general intelligence], humans are valuable,” Kalanick said recently on the TBPN podcast. “And they are going to become more and more valuable, because they will be the long pole in the tent to progress.”
The serial entrepreneur and CloudKitchens CEO uses one blue-collar profession as an example: plumbers.
If every job in the world was automated except for plumbers, those human workers would be “extremely valuable” because they’re critically essential to the success of expanding infrastructure. New buildings couldn’t be made unless plumbers were readily available—and there would be “so much efficiency everywhere” that they would need millions of people for the task.
Kalanick also confronted the possibility that all human workers could one day be replaced by super AGI. Still, he offered an optimistic, “white-pilled” take on the situation: new “solutions” will emerge, and there’s no need to fret about a work wipeout—for now.
“Until we get there, I believe we’re going to be super fine,” he continued. “That’s my white pill.”
The CEOs who believe AI will create ‘better’ jobs and ‘superhuman’ working skills
While many workers are hand-wringing over the fate of their careers, there are several CEOs who believe humans will be turbocharged rather than crushed by AI.
The CEO of DeepMind, Demis Hassabis, believes that AI will actually create new jobs that leverage the tools and “are actually better.” He told Wired in a 2025 interview that so long as everything goes well, the tech will bring about a “golden era” of radical abundance within the next decade.
Instead of being a job-killer, he predicted AGI will actually be a win for society, curing disease, increasing lifespans, and finding new energy sources starting 2030.
“If that all happens, then it should be an era of maximum human flourishing, where we travel to the stars and colonize the galaxy,” Hassabis continued, adding that AI will serve as “these incredible tools that supercharge our productivity and actually almost make us a little bit superhuman.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman also insisted that the coming decade could be the most exciting time in history to start a career, despite the percolating anxiety around AI automation. Echoing Hassabis’ projection, Altman sees massive potential for new human work in space. These universe-explorers will get paid cushy salaries, and will feel “so bad for you and I that we had to do this really boring, old work and everything is just better.”
“In 2035, that graduating college student, if they still go to college at all, could very well be leaving on a mission to explore the solar system on a spaceship in some completely new, exciting, super well-paid, super interesting job,” Altman told journalist Cleo Abram last year.
Leaders are also lauding the idea that AI will give workers “superhuman” skills—and as the technology advances, it’ll only get better. Instead of being a career threat, Nvidia leader Jensen Huang said that AI gives his peers wings in an industry innovating at breakneck speed.
“I’m surrounded by superhuman people and super intelligence, from my perspective, because they’re the best in the world at what they do,” Huang told Abram in a 2025 episode. “And they do what they do way better than I can do it. And I’m surrounded by thousands of them. Yet it never one day caused me to think, all of a sudden, I’m no longer necessary.”
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com