As ChatGPT becomes more sophisticated, its practical use cases grow. And as it turns out, different generations use the product differently, according to OpenAI CEO Sam Altman.
“Gross oversimplification, but like older people use ChatGPT as a Google replacement. Maybe people in their 20s and 30s use it as like a life advisor, and then, like people in college use it as an operating system,” Altman said at Sequoia Capital’s AI Ascent event last May.
Venture-capital firm Sequoia first invested in OpenAI in 2021 when the company was valued at $14 billion. Currently, OpenAI is valued at $852 billion after one of the largest-ever private funding rounds. Sequoia has also invested in other tech giants like Nvidia, Reddit, Instacart, YouTube, Apple, Dropbox, Airbnb, and Doordash.
Altman said young people use ChatGPT similar to how they’d use an operating system. They have complex ways to set it up and connect it to files and have fairly complex prompts memorized or saved somewhere.
“I mean, that stuff, I think, is all cool and impressive,” Altman said. “And there’s this other thing where, like, they don’t really make life decisions without asking ChatGPT what they should do.”
In 2025, OpenAI published a report saying “more than any other use case, more than any other kind of user, college-aged young adults in the U.S. are embracing ChatGPT, adding that more than one-third of 18-to-24 year olds use ChatGPT.
Younger users are able to do this since ChatGPT has memory of previous conversations the user has had with the AI product. “It has the full context on every person in their life and what they’ve talked about,” Altman said.
Reports show people use ChatGPT for anything ranging from relationship advice to business and medical questions. Others use it as a replacement for talk therapy.
Meanwhile, experts in those respective fields are torn on whether it’s safe and advisable to consult ChatGPT for major life decisions. For example, a November 2023 study “highlights the need for caution when using ChatGPT for safety-related information and expert verification, as well as the need for ethical considerations and safeguards to ensure users understand the limitations and receive appropriate advice.” Another study said large language models, like ChatGPT, are “inherently sociopathic,” making it difficult to trust their advice.
Other studies and experiments, however, show using ChatGPT for common advice to be harmless—and even helpful in some cases.
OpenAI didn’t immediately respond to Fortune’s request for comment about whether it’s safe or reliable to use ChatGPT for advice.
“The difference is unbelievable” in how a 20-year-old might use ChatGPT versus older generations, Altman said during the Sequoia talk.
“It reminds me of, like, when the smartphone came out, and, like, every kid was able to use it super well,” Altman said. “And older people, just like, took, like, three years to figure out how to do basic stuff.”
A version of this story was originally published on Fortune.com on May 13, 2025.
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