OpenAI CEO Sam Altman Admits Codex Made Him Feel ’A Little Useless’ - The AI That’s Making Coders Obsolete

Sam Altman—the man steering OpenAI—just confessed something that should send shivers through every developer's keyboard: Codex, the company's AI coding assistant, made him feel "a little useless." If the guy at the helm feels redundant, what's left for the rest of us?

When AI Writes Better Than You

Forget simple autocomplete. Codex doesn't just suggest a line—it drafts entire functions, troubleshoots complex bugs, and generates production-ready code from a plain English prompt. It's like having a senior engineer who never sleeps, never complains, and works at the speed of thought. Altman's moment of existential doubt wasn't about a glitch; it was about witnessing a tool that could genuinely outperform human intuition in its own domain.

The New Development Stack: Prompt, Generate, Deploy

The traditional coding workflow is getting bulldozed. Why spend hours debugging when an AI can pinpoint the error in seconds? Why architect from scratch when you can describe the blueprint and watch it build itself? This isn't augmentation anymore; it's automation of the core creative act. Development teams are shrinking, project timelines are collapsing, and the very skill of "writing code" is being abstracted into "orchestrating AI."

A Cynical Finance Jab

Wall Street's already salivating—imagine the margin expansion when you replace six-figure engineering salaries with a monthly SaaS subscription. It's the ultimate growth hack: fire your devs, boost your stock.

The Human in the Loop Is Now the Bottleneck

So where does this leave the Sams of the world? Altman's comment cuts to the heart of the coming transition. The value shifts from raw coding prowess to high-level problem definition, strategic oversight, and ethical guardrails. The job isn't to write the code, but to ask the perfect question and judge the quality of the answer. The feeling of "uselessness" might just be the growing pains of evolving from a craftsman to a conductor. The tools are getting smarter. The question is, can we keep up?

Tech community pushes back on Altman’s AI comments

One user said Altman would have a $100 billion parachute exit, but most regular workers wouldn’t get that kind of luck. With 50-60% of white-collar jobs potentially disappearing because of AI, many people would feel much more useless and sad, without any safety net to fall back on.

An OpenSea engineer noted that Altman could “cry into a giant pile of money,” but not for “ordinary workers.” Instead, they would have to rely on chatbots for the remainder of their careers, highlighting the divide between tech executives and average workers facing AI transformations.

Food writer Chrisy Toombs, for example, said she found herself incensed about the wider ramifications of AI. She said she had seen her career vanish as AI’s ability to create “vacuous copies” of her work expanded. And that also had consequences: AI models were trained on the work of people without their consent, and, ever since, many creators have felt powerless.

Altman’s post also coincided with OpenAI’s announcement to retire GPT-4o, along with GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1 mini, o4-mini, and legacy GPT-5 models. GPT-4o was renowned for its chatty tone and multimodality, and users previously protested efforts to diminish it. 

Currently, the majority of users prefer recent models, the company said, such as GPT-5.2, which provide customizable personalities and creative controls emulating GPT-4o’s best features.

Tech leaders grapple with AI’s impact on creativity

With mounting criticism, Altman attracted the attention of many tech folks thanks to his honesty. Aditya Agarwal, a former Dropbox CTO and early Facebook engineer, had mixed feelings: “I spent a lot of time over the weekend writing code with Claude. And it was very clear that we will never write code by hand again. It doesn’t make any sense to do so,” he said. “Something I was very good at is now free and abundant. I am happy… but disoriented… both the FORM and function of my early career are now produced by AI. I am happy, but also sad and confused.”

Altman’s post highlights a broader tension at play in today’s technology landscape. Even AI pioneers say their knowledge and outputs dwindle as AI tool capabilities grow. It’s also indicative of broader social issues related to relevance, work, and creativity in an AI-dominated world. 

Altman felt he was on the receiving end of criticism, but ultimately, he got to speak from the human side of technological advancement. Just as an important reminder that, as AI continues to evolve, that feeling of inadequacy, nostalgia, and wonder will surely factor in. And not only everyday users, but also people who turn the tools into products.

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