# AI may make us busier as our ambitions keep expanding

Markdown copy of https://realalpha.app/s/ai-may-make-us-busier-as-our-ambitions-keep-expanding/ on Real Alpha, the best minutes from long interviews with the people building AI. Cite and link the page, not this copy.

- Speaker: [Sam Altman](https://realalpha.app/builders/sam-altman/) · Sam Altman is co-Founder & CEO of OpenAI.
- Host: [Ti Morse](https://realalpha.app/people/ti-morse/) · Host, Relentless · Interviews hard-tech founders on Relentless; guests include Sam Altman, Brian Armstrong and Hadrian's Chris Power.
- Show: Relentless
- Episode: [Sam Altman - How to Start a Startup](https://realalpha.app/v/Vv3CEAS_w34/), Jul 25, 2026
- Moment: 44:43 to 48:07 of the episode (3 min), playing on https://realalpha.app/s/ai-may-make-us-busier-as-our-ambitions-keep-expanding/; the episode from there: https://realalpha.app/v/Vv3CEAS_w34/?t=2683

## Quote

> “i expect that to keep going and i think we're all going to be **much busier than we thought** we were supposed to be in a post super intelligence world”
> — [Sam Altman](https://realalpha.app/builders/sam-altman/) at [46:19](https://realalpha.app/v/Vv3CEAS_w34/?t=2779) · Relentless

## Takeaways

1. Productivity gains often lead people to take on more, not less.
2. People value being useful and creating things for others.
3. Human desires and evolutionary drives are likely to persist.

## About this segment

Sam Altman expects AI to raise productivity without shrinking work: people keep inventing goals, competing and seeking ways to be useful. Abundance may not mean mass leisure.

From “Sam Altman - How to Start a Startup”, Jul 25, 2026. [Watch the full episode](https://realalpha.app/v/Vv3CEAS_w34/)

## Transcript

Transcribed by machine (Whisper) from the episode’s audio, so a word may be off here and there.

[44:49](https://realalpha.app/v/Vv3CEAS_w34/?t=2689) better, the people that I know that, like, no one is less busy. Everyone is more busy. Everyone's just doing more stuff except for the people that are like oh i spent a trillion tokens uh and like what have i love this uh thing that i saw where someone said like i spent you know ungodly numbers of tokens and then someone said why aren't you more successful you know technology for a long time has been promising people that they're going to work less and they're going to have all this leisure and it has gone in that direction like i think people do have more time for leisure than they had at many previous points in history and a higher quality of life in many ways but somehow we never get the promise of the four-hour work week at mass scale in society and i don't expect ai to change that uh clearly society is not working for a lot of people and more productivity

[45:49](https://realalpha.app/v/Vv3CEAS_w34/?t=2749) gains that actually occur to people would be a great thing and i suspect they will i suspect that will happen but i think that i really admire about people is our expectations go up we always want more we think of new things to do to create for each other to want for ourselves and we you know it's like a it's like a relative game people are like very focused on how they're doing relative to other people and so the competition that drives the economy and the kind of i think the the very wonderful desires about wanting to be useful to other people and create something and be of service and that whole cluster i expect that to keep going and i think we're all going to be much busier than we thought we were supposed to be in a post super intelligence world and we're still going to complain about it but secretly we're gonna be happy how do you think the status games

[46:38](https://realalpha.app/v/Vv3CEAS_w34/?t=2798) change as less and less of our direct input is correlated with like value creation i don't i don't think it will feel at all like our direct like the things that we value i suspect will be things that are like very human well like one thing is like cooking for people you're not like creating a much of value in the world but it like shows love you are creating value and that it's like those are the experiences that you're not creating like economic value in the maybe traditional sense um cooking for people is a great example i suspect that people cooking and eating together will remain important long after robots can do a great job cooking food do you think that a good heuristic would almost be like the greatest works of the the longest surviving works so let's say the bible for example odds are it's still going to be impactful like a thousand

[47:36](https://realalpha.app/v/Vv3CEAS_w34/?t=2856) years from now because it's been impactful for the past two thousand years so far do you think that if you had to like extrapolate out what are the things that humans are still going to care about it's like what is the most primal earliest thing you know we love adventure we love a good quest yeah i think betting against evolutionary biology is like usually a bad bet yeah and so i would i would assume those things continue when was the last time that You realized that you weren't like being ambitious enough.