What many people tend to forget is that behind artificial intelligence, there are people. Real people. Working day in, day out. Building technology designed to improve our lives. Correcting errors, earning trust, programming, teaching. There is much more behind AI than most of us initially realize.
OpenAI, for example, is one of the world’s leading AI research and deployment organizations. One with around 4,500 employees. But it’s especially the global footprint that gives you an idea of its actual scale: offices in Munich, Berlin, London, New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, and many more around the world.
And while OpenAI operates globally, Germany is becoming an increasingly important market. The country ranks among the world’s top five for weekly ChatGPT users. Some more interesting facts: Around 30 percent of all messages from Germany are work-related. Roughly 60 percent of users are between 18 and 34 years old. And in a 0.5 percent sample alone, around 800,000 prompts were related to the FIFA World Cup.
The numbers speak for themselves. But statistics only tell part of the story. So, we wanted to look beyond the two-dimensional world of the internet and meet one of the people behind it. Not ChatGPT itself, of course. But someone who knows it exceptionally well: Sandro Gianella has been with OpenAI for more than three years and is a senior member of the company’s International Strategy team, helping scale OpenAI’s products and organization across global markets.
In our conversation, we talk about the fear of AI replacing jobs, hallucinations, healthcare, why some people use ChatGPT during long car rides and what the future of artificial intelligence could look like for all of us.
SLEEK Hi Sandro! How often do people ask you at parties whether AI is going to replace us all?
SANDRO GIANELLA Actually, less and less these days. I’ve been at OpenAI for three years now, and I’d say that when the discussion was still much more theoretical, and fewer people were using the products, it came up far more often. These days, perhaps it’s also because I don’t go to as many parties anymore, the conversation is more about: How do I use this? How do I make the most of it? It quickly turns into a discussion about tips and tricks. That’s become the bigger topic.
S Do you find it tiring being asked about it all the time?
SG No, not really. Germany is a huge growth market for us. It’s number one in Europe in terms of weekly usage. I think it’s great that people are interested. I learn something from those conversations myself. After all, OpenAI wasn’t built for one specific job or one specific task. I always learn something new when I see how people use the products or the creative ideas they come up with.
S I can imagine. The numbers are incredibly impressive. What’s the first piece of advice you usually give people?
SG Try it, try it, try it. Most people are already doing that, but I notice that a lot of people are still using AI the way they did one or two years ago. That doesn’t sound like a long time, but the products evolve so quickly that many people don’t realise how much has changed. So don’t just search for information. Give it things to do. See how good the results are. And just stick with it. I think many people underestimate how quickly these systems are improving.
S You’ve witnessed all of these rapid developments first-hand. Those three years are basically the years in which everything really took off. Can you still remember the beginning?
SG What’s interesting is that the first time I really paid attention to all of this was when the GPT-2 blog post came out. That’s almost ancient history now. Back then, the idea was: we’re developing language models, and one day they’ll become highly intelligent and have a major impact on society and the economy. I remember thinking, wow, what’s coming our way? That was the moment I realised there was a company with a very clear mission, but also a vision for how to handle this technology responsibly.
S What’s the biggest and most impressive change you’ve seen since then?
SG When I spoke to users or customers back then, most people couldn’t really imagine what this technology might become. For me, the biggest change is that the conversation has now truly reached the mainstream. And that’s a good thing. People are doing much more with this technology today, and interestingly, they also expect much more from it. It fascinates me to see how quickly society adapts to new technologies.
S Do you think that, because you’ve seen all these changes from behind the scenes, you have a better sense of where AI is heading? Or does that feeling of unpredictability remain, where it’s impossible to imagine what AI might look like in ten years’ time?
SG Good question. I think it’s a bit of both. There’s that saying: “The future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed”. I feel like it has something very true to it. I work very closely with people and organisations who use AI very effectively. So, I do have a bit of a gut feeling for what it might look like if more people start using these technologies in a similar way. At the same time, the technology we’re building is very general-purpose. And that’s exactly what makes it so exciting. Whether it’s education, healthcare or research, there are so many areas where it can help. How quickly that happens, and what it will actually feel like, is much harder to predict. So yes, a bit of both.
S When you first started, did you have any reservations about AI yourself? Or could you simply not picture where it was all going?
SG I don’t know if reservations is quite the right word. The two words that come to mind are curiosity and respect. Curiosity because, even three or four years ago, our researchers believed they’d found a way to scale these models and make them increasingly capable. Looking at how quickly they’ve improved since then, they were right. And from that comes respect, not just for the technology itself, but for the responsibility of bringing it into the world in a way that people feel comfortable with. Our goal isn’t only to make the models more capable, but also more reliable and genuinely useful. Ultimately, people should feel these tools help them achieve what matters to them and improve their everyday lives. They should always feel in control. AI should be a tool they use for their own goals, not something with goals of its own.
S OpenAI is also involved in a lot of projects that people probably don’t immediately associate with the company. You already mentioned healthcare. I wasn’t aware of how much work you’re doing alongside experts in those areas.
SG Absolutely. Whether it’s healthcare, mental health or education, we work with experts across many different fields to better understand how these tools can be used. For example, we’re working with the Estonian government on how to introduce AI responsibly into schools. In healthcare, we work closely with specialists because we see that people are already using these tools for exactly those kinds of questions. I actually think there’s something positive in the fact that people use these systems to talk about things they’re worried about or struggling with. That makes it all the more important that the answers are useful and reliable.
S Public discussions often focus on which jobs might disappear. So, let’s turn it around for once. Which jobs do you think become more attractive because of AI?
SG Honestly, I hope quite a lot of them do. I think AI encourages people to ask themselves what their job is really about. As a teacher, a doctor or a creative professional, you have a mission. Yet so much time is spent on tasks that aren’t the reason you chose that profession in the first place. Take teachers. If AI can reduce the time they spend preparing materials, they can focus more on their students. I imagine many would find that far more rewarding. The same is true for creative work. If I have an idea, I can experiment, build and test concepts much more quickly. Many of the technical, financial and organisational barriers that used to slow people down are starting to disappear. I hope that means more people can spend their time on the work they care about most, explore ideas they might never have pursued before, and take on meaningful work sooner in their careers.
S I find that really interesting. I think we simply have to be open to the idea that the world of work is going to change. Not necessarily for the worse, just differently.
SG Exactly. I think so too. And I often notice that the more curious people are about these developments, the more possibilities they begin to see. At that point, the question is no longer whether the technology is coming. It’s what you’re going to do with it. How can you use it to improve your work, your team or your organisation? And I do think that people who ask those questions will end up reshaping professions, and perhaps even entire organisations.
S So it’s not really just about efficiency?
SG Exactly. Efficiency is part of it, but I think it’s something bigger than that. In the past, I often needed a report from our data science team to answer certain questions. Today I can get many of those answers myself in a matter of minutes. Of course that makes me more efficient, but more importantly, it gives me more time to focus on the questions I actually care about. I see the same thing happening across many professions. When routine work becomes easier, there’s more room for ideas, creativity, meaningful conversations and new projects. Take meetings, for example. When an AI assistant takes notes and generates action points, people are much more present. No one is half in the meeting and half buried in their notes. The conversations themselves become better.
S That’s interesting because it’s something I’ve been thinking about a lot. Does AI bring people together, or does it push them apart?
SG I actually think it can bring people together. When information becomes easier to access, it’s easier to find out who’s working on what. But the most interesting questions remain human ones. Why did someone make a particular decision? How did they arrive at an idea? You don’t just want to know what someone is working on. You want to know what they were thinking. That interest in other people isn’t going away. If anything, it becomes more important.
S Has there been a particular use of AI that really surprised you?
SG Yes, actually. A friend of mine has a 45-minute drive to work every day. He used to listen to podcasts constantly. Then one day he told me: I don’t listen to podcasts anymore. I talk to ChatGPT.
S Really? Why?
SG He said: because when I listen to a podcast, I can’t ask questions. With ChatGPT, I can. Now he picks a topic and spends half an hour discussing it on his drive to work. I found that fascinating because it never would have occurred to me to use the product that way. I thought it was brilliant because it was such a different way of using the product.
S A lot of people still wonder how trustworthy those conversations are. How do you think about hallucinations?
SG I think that was much more of a 2025 problem than a 2026 problem. Not that it’s disappeared completely, but the models have improved enormously. Making them more reliable has been a major focus for us over the past few years. Today, they’re much more likely to use tools and carry out research rather than simply generate answers, making it easier for people to understand where information comes from. What’s also exciting is that we’re increasingly seeing these models contribute in areas like science and mathematics. We’ve even seen one of our models solve a mathematical problem that had not previously been solved by humans. That’s a reminder that these systems aren’t just retrieving information. In some cases, they can help push knowledge forward.
S Last question. What are you personally most excited about when you think about the future of AI?
SG I think it’s exactly what we’ve been talking about. The idea that people with ideas, a vision, or a problem they want to solve will face far fewer barriers. Whether they want to build something, create art, start a company, or simply try something new. I think many more people will be able to do things that previously required huge amounts of time, money or specialist skills. That democratisation of intelligence, if you want to call it that, is incredibly exciting to me. The idea that more people can turn their ideas into reality. And that’s what I look forward to most. A world that becomes a little more colourful, more creative and more diverse.