Researchers are said to be replaced first, sales last

The remark, relayed second-hand on X (post), orders OpenAI’s own headcount by exposure: researchers first, infrastructure engineers second, sales last. In the same week Sam Altman said Codex models would soon reach the Cybersecurity High tier of OpenAI’s preparedness framework and cast the company’s strategy as defensive acceleration, patching the world’s code before the models can break it (post). It sharpens Jack Clark’s observation of two weeks earlier that AI was doing components of AI research, and the eight-months-to-intern-researchers report before it, into a statement about which humans the loop displaces first; OpenAI later put a date on the automated intern with a September target.