Sam Altman shares his 'best, accidental' career advice — and why it's the best time to get into computer science (www.businessinsider.com)

In a wide-ranging interview with Stanford professor Dan Boneh, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman offered career advice and a call-to-action for the next generation of technologists: hang around the smartest people you can, work on interesting problems, and run tight feedback loops to improve — advice he calls his "best, accidental" career move. He also urged students to focus on AI now, calling it "the most important trend of this generation" and a high-leverage area to enter. Altman reiterated OpenAI’s long-term focus on AGI and flagged an ambitious internal target — an automated AI researcher by March 2028 — underscoring why the field is attracting intense attention and talent. Altman argued that computer science education needs a major rethink because AI is changing how software is written; he said current curricula are often "10 years behind" what's most useful. That view echoes warnings from other leaders: Andrew Ng has said universities haven’t adapted fast enough and some CS grads face higher unemployment, while OpenAI chair Bret Taylor maintains CS degrees still teach valuable systems thinking. The implication for the AI/ML community is twofold — immediate hiring demand and shifting skillsets toward agent-centered design, AI tooling, and interdisciplinary thinking — and a growing imperative for educators and employers to update training to match rapidly evolving AI workflows.