OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says Gen Z and millennials are using ChatGPT like a ‘life advisor’—but college students might be one step ahead

As Chat GPT becomes more sophisticated, its practical use cases grow. And as it turns out, different generations use the product differently, according to Open AI CEO Sam Altman. “Gross oversimplification, but like older people use Chat GPT 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. How Gen Z uses ChatGPT differently from millennials 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. F