The release of the new GPT-5.2 model has raised new concerns about the relevance of several jobs that could be immediately phased out. A senior OpenAI executive has identified the three professional fields most vulnerable to AI-led automation in the near future: coding, customer service, and life sciences.
Olivier Godement, OpenAI’s head of product for business products, has made the prediction during a recent podcast appearance, arguing that these sectors are already seeing the most dramatic and scaled deployment of advanced AI tools. While stating that widespread white-collar job layoffs are not going to happen overnight, Godement warned that the rate of transformation in these specific areas is outpacing initial industry expectations.
AI in life sciences and coding leads the change
Godement highlighted the life sciences and pharmaceutical industries as particularly ready for deep AI automation. He explained that large parts of their process, which are often document-heavy and slow, are ideally suited for AI intervention.
“My bet is often on life sciences, pharma companies,” Godement stated. He added that AI models excel at the time-consuming administrative phases of drug development. “The time it takes from once you lock the recipe of a drug to having that drug on the market is months, sometimes years.” He went on to say that AI’s ability to “aggregate, consolidate tons of structured and unstructured data, and spot the different changes in documents” can dramatically compress these timelines, thus creating massive efficiency gains.
In addition to pharma, Godement named coding as another primary target. Developer tools powered by AI are becoming increasingly capable, leading to significant productivity boosts in engineering teams globally.
AI can also transform customer service
The third sector that’s facing rapid transformation due to AI is customer service. This career section is already benefiting from AI models that are becoming more reliable and sophisticated at handling complex customer interactions. Godement cited OpenAI’s work with major companies, including T-Mobile, as an example of current-day viability.
He stated that these AI models are “starting to achieve fairly good results in terms of quality at a meaningful scale” in providing customer experience solutions. Godement concluded by saying that based on current AI development, the industry will be “surprised in the next year or two” by how reliably these tasks can be fully automated.
