The capital holders in all industries would love expensive human labor to be replaced by cheap automated labor. If programming AI is created, no labor organization could save software engineers, just as it would be ridiculous to think horse and buggy drivers or telegraph operators could have stopped the march of progress.
The bigger issue is what has we've already started to witness: automation leads to accelerated accumulation of wealth and resources among those who already have the most capital. Historically, corporate profit and labor demand went up or down together. Now they're diverging: corporate profit grows while demand for labor shrinks. The spoils of corporate success goes to those who own the tools of automation, and others lose their job and income.
In any case, OpenAI's vision here is much bigger than making software developers obsolete: they want to study (or create) AI that can improve itself (i.e., a singularity scenario).
Almost every reply to my comment talks about saving jobs, but I never even brought that up. Organization is important because you want to be left with something more than a seat at the unemployment office when your job does disappear.
Pensions. There will likely come a time when most of us are no longer employable. We have (or will have) put our lives into this and made a small group of people very wealthy. Without negotiating from a position of relative strength, we will be left with nothing when we are no longer necessary.
The bigger issue is what has we've already started to witness: automation leads to accelerated accumulation of wealth and resources among those who already have the most capital. Historically, corporate profit and labor demand went up or down together. Now they're diverging: corporate profit grows while demand for labor shrinks. The spoils of corporate success goes to those who own the tools of automation, and others lose their job and income.
In any case, OpenAI's vision here is much bigger than making software developers obsolete: they want to study (or create) AI that can improve itself (i.e., a singularity scenario).