• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said AI will change education, and he doubled down on his previous sentiment that college isn’t the best path for everyone. Altman noted education is “going to feel very different” possibly in 18 years when a new generation will have never known a world without AI. However, the CEO claimed education and human jobs won’t go away, but will merely evolve.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is so skeptical of college he doesn’t think his own kid will attend.

Having dropped out himself—from Stanford University in 2005—the now-billionaire has often advised young people to look beyond a college education and not automatically follow the traditional path. In previous comments, Altman has downplayed his own decision to drop out, saying he always had the option to return if things didn’t work out.

Dating back more than a decade, Altman has long cautioned that young people shouldn’t go to college without dedicating themselves to worthwhile projects and connecting with ambitious people. 

“Most people think about risk the wrong way—for example, staying in college seems like a non-risky path. However, getting nothing done for four of your most productive years is actually pretty risky,” he wrote in a blog post in 2013.

In an interview on the This Past Weekend podcast with comedian Theo Von published Thursday, Altman expanded on his thoughts, claiming his kid would “probably not” go to college.

In a world where young people grow up with new advanced technology such as AI, Altman notes that future kids, including his own, will never be smarter than AI, and will never know a world where products and services aren’t smarter than them. This changes the game for education, he said.

“In that world, education is going to feel very different. I already think college is, like, maybe not working great for most people, but I think if you fast-forward 18 years it’s going to look like a very very different thing,” he said.

While Altman told Von he had “deep worries” about technology and how it is affecting kids and their development, especially the “dopamine hit” of short-form video, he noted the real challenge with advancing AI is whether adults will be able to catch up. 

“I actually think the kids will be fine; I’m worried about the parents. If you look at the history of the world when there’s a new technology—people that grow up with it, they’re always fluent. They always figure out what to do. They always learn the new kinds of jobs. But if you’re like a 50-year-old and you have to kind of learn how to do things in a very different way, that doesn’t always work,” he said.

Altman clarified the advent of new technology will likely eliminate some jobs, but many more jobs will evolve rather than disappear. Just like when Google first came online when he was in junior high, some are also now claiming education may become useless thanks to AI. 

Altman doesn’t buy into this idea. Rather, he points to new tech as yet another tool that helps people think better, come up with better ideas, and do new things.

“I’m sure the same thing happened with the calculator before, and now this is just a new tool that exists in the tool chain,” he said.

However, Altman cautioned, it’s impossible to know how education and jobs will evolve and which roles will exist in the future, and how. He noted his own job as CEO of an AI company would likely have been unimaginable in the past. An AI CEO may even be on the horizon for OpenAI, he said, and therefore his own job would have to change.

Altman isn’t a doomer about the future of work, though, because of the innate social nature of humans and their seemingly limitless capacity for creativity, purpose-seeking, and improving their social status.

In the same way people from the time of the Industrial Revolution might have viewed modern humans as leading a relatively easy existence, looking forward 100 years from now, we may well think the same thing. Either way, he said, he sees a bright future ahead.

“I think that’s beautiful. I think it’s great that those people in the past think we have it so easy. I think it’s great that we think those people in the future have it so easy,” Altman said. “That is the beautiful story of us all contributing to human progress and everybody’s lives getting better and better.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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• Olive Garden, the Italian restaurant owned by Darden Restaurants, was founded in Orlando in the ‘80s and quickly found a loyal fanbase in part because of its “never-ending” first course, which includes unlimited breadsticks. While unlimited breadsticks have now become a staple of the company’s brand, the dish was actually first offered as a way to occupy customers after long wait times to receive their meal.

Olive Garden’s unlimited breadsticks are beloved by its loyal customers more than any other menu item, but few know the treasured appetizer was originally adopted to keep them busy.

The breadsticks have been a staple of Olive Garden’s Italian-style fare since 1982, when the first restaurant was opened on International Drive in Orlando. An immediate success, the restaurant enjoyed a far better crowd than expected on that first day, but food took longer than expected to leave the kitchen, an Olive Garden spokesperson told Fortune.

On the restaurant’s second day, it was just as busy, and the restaurant team made a decision that would later become a staple of the brand: to give the customers refills on breadsticks, for no extra cost, while they waited for their meals to arrive. While alarm bells rang and kitchen staff struggled to make enough sauce, customers munching on free breadsticks were satisfied.

“It made guests really happy, but it also helped the kitchen catch up since servers could get them themselves,” Jaime Bunker, Olive Garden’s senior vice president of marketing, told CNN.

Soon after, the company added soup and salad for customers purchasing an adult entrée to enjoy in the restaurant.

“Olive Garden’s Never-Ending First Course was born,” the spokesperson said.

Courtesy of Olive Garden

While the breadsticks have always been popular with customers, the way Olive Garden managed them wasn’t always a hit with investors. In 2014, hedge fund Starboard Value released a 300-page presentation criticizing Darden and Olive Garden. In the document, the investor said servers were bringing out too many breadsticks at once and claimed the breadsticks had declined in quality so much as to be compared to hot dog buns. After a proxy battle, Starboard replaced Darden’s board of directors and made significant changes to the company’s restaurants including Olive Garden, but kept the unlimited breadsticks as a staple.

More than 40 years later, the company’s bottomless breadsticks go hand-in-hand with the brand’s identity and are a big part of why customers have made Olive Garden one of Darden Restaurants’ most profitable brands, said Fordham University adjunct professor of Hospitality Marketing Stacy Ross Cohen. 

Olive Garden accounted for $5.21 billion in sales in fiscal 2025, making up about 43% of Darden Restaurants’ revenue for the year, and 47% of its total segment profit over the same period. Of all the company’s brands, which also include Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse and LongHorn Steakhouse, Olive Garden has the most non-franchise locations at 935. 

Customers have come to expect the breadsticks and keep coming back in part just for the experience, Ross Cohen told Fortune. 

“The breadsticks are something that make people feel recognized. They make them feel important. They feel cared for,” said Ross Cohen, who is also CEO of marketing agency Co-Communications.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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