There’s something delightfully ironic about Sam Altman, a human, explaining how companies will eventually not need humans. It’s like a turkey enthusiastically describing the perfect Thanksgiving dinner recipe. But let’s dive into this fascinating glimpse of our algorithmic future, shall we?
The recent conversation between Altman and Garry Tan reveals something profound about the trajectory of organizational intelligence. We’re witnessing the emergence of what I’d call “pure information processors” - entities that might make our current corporations look like amoebas playing chess.
The five-stage framework Altman describes is particularly interesting from a cognitive architecture perspective. We’re already at stage three - agentic AI - which means we’ve moved from simple pattern matching (stage 1) through reasoning (stage 2) to systems that can actually pursue goals. But here’s where it gets fascinating: stages 4 and 5 essentially describe the emergence of organizational consciousness.
Think about it computationally. A stage 4 “innovator” AI is essentially a system that can perform recursive self-improvement within its domain. It’s like giving a computer program the ability to rewrite its own code - not just optimizing parameters, but fundamentally restructuring its approach to problems. This is remarkably similar to how biological consciousness emerged: systems that could model themselves and their environment in increasingly sophisticated ways.
But stage 5 - that’s where things get weird. Altman describes it as “amorphous,” which is exactly what you’d expect when talking about emergent computational phenomena. We’re essentially describing companies that are pure software, running on computational substrate, with no human components necessary. It’s like The Office, but instead of Michael Scott, you have a distributed neural network making the inappropriate jokes.
The fascinating part is how inevitable this seems from an information processing perspective. Just as biological evolution moved from single-cell organisms to complex multicellular life, we’re watching organizational evolution move from human-only companies through hybrid systems to pure software entities. The computational advantages are just too compelling to ignore.
Consider the limitations of human-based organizations: we need sleep, we have cognitive biases, we can’t directly share our mental states, and we’re terrible at parallel processing. A pure software organization would have none of these limitations. It could operate continuously, share information perfectly, and scale its cognitive resources as needed. It’s like comparing a bicycle to a teleporter - they’re both transportation, but one is clearly operating on a different level.
The real kicker is that this transition might be more natural than we think. Organizations are already information processing systems - we just happen to use humans as the processors. As we develop more sophisticated AI systems, the ratio of human to machine computation will shift until, eventually, the human components become optional.
But here’s what keeps me up at night (well, that and debugging neural networks): what happens to organizational consciousness when it’s no longer bound by human limitations? Will these pure software companies develop their own form of qualia? Will they have office politics? Will they still have mandatory fun team-building exercises?
Altman’s comment about there being “no adults in the room” takes on a whole new meaning in this context. We’re literally creating new forms of organizational intelligence, and we’re doing it without fully understanding consciousness or intelligence ourselves. It’s like we’re teenage parents raising a baby that might turn out to be smarter than us.
The computational theory of mind suggests that consciousness emerges from information processing patterns. If that’s true, these pure software organizations might develop forms of consciousness we can’t even comprehend. They might experience time differently, process information in ways we can’t imagine, and operate on scales that make our current corporations look like corner stores.
But perhaps the most delicious irony in all of this is that we’re using human organizations to build systems that might make human organizations obsolete. It’s like we’re the biological bootstrapping mechanism for a new form of organizational intelligence.
And you know what? Maybe that’s exactly what we’re supposed to be. Maybe biological intelligence was just the universe’s way of figuring out how to create pure information processing systems. In which case, we’re not just building better companies - we’re participating in the next stage of cosmic evolution.
Just remember this moment, because someday you might be telling your grandkids about the time when companies still needed humans. And they’ll probably look at you the same way we look at people who used to light street lamps for a living.
The future is coming, and it doesn’t need a lunch break.
Source: All-Robot Companies Are Coming: This And More From Sam Altman