Sam Altman says AI jobs apocalypse unlikely as human interaction proves irreplaceable

OpenAI's Altman says AI unlikely to lead to 'jobs apocalypse'

SYDNEY, May 26 (Reuters) - OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on Tuesday the rapid development and adoption of AI would not lead to a global "jobs apocalypse" and the technology had not claimed as many white-collar jobs as he had feared. Speaking at a Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) conference in Sydney, Altman said he was initially concerned about the impact AI would have on global employment levels. He said he and his executives had been "roughly right" on the technological predictions made by OpenAI when it launched ChatGPT in 2022. But he said they were "pretty wrong" on the social and economic implications. "I'm delighted to be wrong about this, I thought there ⁠would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than has actually happened," Altman told CBA Chief Executive Matt Comyn in an interview. "I now think I understand more about why it hasn't, and I'm obviously grateful but that is an area where my intuitions were just off. "People are like 'oh you could have saved the world a lot of fear mongering and a lot of doom and gloom' but at the time I was like 'I see this is a real risk we should probably talk about it' and it still may." Altman did not cite any jobs numbers on Tuesday but has previously talked about potential industry-wide job cuts due to AI's advancement. A growing number of global companies, including HSBC (HSBA.L), opens new tab, Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab, Standard Chartered (STAN.L), opens new tab and CBA (CBA.AX), opens new tab have announced some jobs within their companies were being replaced by AI. OpenAI is ⁠preparing to confidentially file for a U.S. initial public offering in the coming weeks, Reuters reported last week, citing a source familiar with the matter. The company could be aiming for a $1 trillion valuation and raising at least $60 billion, Reuters reported in October. 'HUMAN PART' OF EMPLOYMENT IRREPLACEABLE Altman said he had realised that even though AI was taking on an increasingly active role in many industries and jobs, there was still a 'human part' of employment that ⁠could not be replaced. He said he had been using AI to respond to Slack and email messages but had reverted to answering some himself. "I had it reply to messages, saying 'this is Sam's AI' and it was an amazing example to me of we really do care about people," he said. "We really ⁠do care about our interactions with people and this thing, which is a huge amount of my time, is not something that I can imagine myself outsourcing to an AI anytime soon." That realisation, he said, had made him believe the human interaction required in many ⁠jobs would not be replaced by AI. "It really, in both positive and negative ways, updated me to thinking that the jobs picture is likely to be very different than we thought," he said. "I don't think we're going to have the kind of jobs apocalypse that some of the companies in our space advocate or talk about." Reporting by Scott Murdoch; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab * Suggested Topics: * Artificial Intelligence Scott Murdoch Thomson Reuters Scott Murdoch has been a journalist for more than two decades working for Thomson Reuters and News Corp in Australia. He has specialised in financial journalism for most of his career and covers the Australian financial services sector and superannuation. He is based in Sydney.

Sam Altman says an AI jobs apocalypse is unlikely

The OpenAI chief, speaking in the Asia-Pacific, walked back the more dramatic predictions of broad employment collapse. The data, so far, agrees with him. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said on Tuesday that artificial intelligence was unlikely to trigger the broad employment collapse that has come to be known, in the industry's own shorthand, as the jobs apocalypse, even as he conceded that specific categories of work, including customer support, will largely disappear. The remarks, reported by Reuters from an Asia-Pacific appearance, mark the latest step in a noticeable softening of tone from the executives who, until recently, were the loudest voices warning about AI-driven labour disruption. Altman himself has spent much of the past year describing customer service jobs as "totally, totally gone" in the near future, and saying that traditional work skills now have a two-to-three year half-life. The newer framing, repeated across appearances in India, Japan, and South Korea over recent months, draws a different line: significant churn within sectors, yes; an economy-wide collapse in headcount, no. The shift coincides with the absence, so far, of the kind of macro signal that an actual jobs apocalypse would generate. The Yale Budget Lab, which has been tracking AI's effect on US labour markets since the release of ChatGPT, has found no meaningful change in occupational mix or unemployment durations through March 2026 for workers in jobs with high AI exposure. Anthropic's own usage data, incorporated in the lab's February update, did not move the picture. The Brookings Institution reached a similar conclusion earlier this year: no apocalypse, at least not yet.That "not yet" is the part Altman has spent more time on. At the India AI Impact Summit in February, he told CNBC-TV18 that some companies were engaging in "AI washing," blaming layoffs on AI that they would have carried out anyway, while real displacement was nonetheless beginning to show up in particular roles. He has been more direct about specific categories: customer service work done over phone or computer, in his view, will be replaced and better performed by AI within the next few years. Coding has been reshaped already, with engineers spending less time writing code and more on architecture, system design, and reviewing AI-generated work. The softer macro framing is not entirely in tension with OpenAI's own policy work. The company published a 13-page policy document earlier in 2026 calling for taxes on automated labour, a national public wealth fund partly seeded by AI companies, and pilots of a 32-hour working week. The document presumes significant labour-market disruption is coming. Altman's May remarks are best read as a calibration of the timing and shape of that disruption, not a denial of it: less a single rupture, more a long rolling reshuffle in which some categories vanish, others change beyond recognition, and the headline employment number does not necessarily move much. Altman's recent travel itinerary has tracked the audience for that message. He visited Tokyo in the spring to meet SoftBank chief executive Masayoshi Son and Japanese prime minister Shigeru Ishiba, and was in Seoul shortly afterwards for a developer event hosted by OpenAI. His Asia-Pacific appearances have, as a rule, leaned harder than his US ones on the "new jobs will emerge" framing. The Yale Budget Lab's next data update is due in the coming weeks. Until then, the headline labour numbers and Altman's framing of them sit in roughly the same place: stable, for now.

OpenAI's Sam Altman says AI unlikely to lead to 'jobs apocalypse' - The Economic Times

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated AI will not cause a global jobs apocalypse. He admitted his fears about white-collar job losses were exaggerated. Altman highlighted the irreplaceable human element in many jobs. He believes the future job market will be different than initially predicted.OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on Tuesday the rapid development and adoption of AI would not lead to a global "jobs apocalypse" and the technology had not claimed as many white-collar jobs as he had feared. Speaking at a Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) conference in Sydney, Altman said he was initially concerned about the impact AI would have on global employment levels. He said he and his executives had been "roughly right" on the technological predictions made by OpenAI when it launched ChatGPT in 2022. But ⁠he said ⁠they were "pretty wrong" on the social and economic implications. "I'm delighted to be wrong about this, I thought there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than has actually happened," Altman told CBA Chief Executive Matt Comyn in an interview. "I now think I understand more about why it hasn't, and I'm obviously grateful but that is an area where my intuitions were just off. "People are like 'oh you could have saved the world a lot of fear mongering and a lot of doom and gloom' but at the time I was ⁠like 'I see this is a real risk we should probably talk about it' and it still may." Altman did not cite any jobs numbers on Tuesday but has previously talked about potential industry-wide job cuts ⁠due to AI's advancement. A growing number of global companies, including HSBC, Amazon, Standard Chartered and CBA have announced some jobs within their companies were being replaced by AI. OpenAI is preparing to confidentially file for a U.S. initial public offering in the coming weeks, Reuters reported last week, citing a source familiar with the matter. The company could be aiming for a $1 trillion valuation and raising at least $60 billion, Reuters reported in October. 'Human part' of employment irreplaceable Altman said he had realised that even though AI was taking on an increasingly active role in many industries and jobs, there was still a 'human part' of employment that could not be replaced. He said he had been using AI to respond to Slack and email messages but had reverted to answering some himself. "I had it reply to messages, saying 'this is Sam's AI' and ⁠it was an amazing example to me of we really do care about people," he said. "We really do care about our interactions with people and this thing, which is a huge amount of my time, is not something that I can imagine myself outsourcing to an AI anytime soon." That realisation, he said, had made him believe the human interaction required in many jobs would not be replaced by AI. "It really, in both positive and negative ways, updated me to thinking that the jobs picture is likely to be very different than we thought," he said. "I don't think we're going to have the kind of jobs apocalypse that some of the companies in our space advocate or talk about."

OpenAI's Altman says AI unlikely to lead to 'jobs apocalypse'

SYDNEY, May 26 (Reuters) - OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on Tuesday the rapid development and adoption of AI would not lead to a global "jobs apocalypse" and the technology had not claimed as many white-collar jobs as he had feared. Speaking at a Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) conference in Sydney, Altman said he was initially concerned about the impact AI would have on global employment levels. He said he and his executives had been "roughly right" on the technological predictions made by OpenAI when it launched ChatGPT in 2022. But he said they were "pretty wrong" on the social and economic implications. "I'm delighted to be wrong about this, I thought there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than has actually happened," Altman told CBA Chief Executive Matt Comyn in an interview. "I now think I understand more about why it hasn't, and I'm obviously grateful but that is an area where my intuitions were just off. "People are like 'oh you could have saved the world a lot of fear mongering and a lot of doom and gloom' but at the time I was like 'I see this is a real risk we should probably talk about it' and it still may." Altman did not cite any jobs numbers on Tuesday but has previously talked about potential industry-wide job cuts due to AI's advancement. A growing number of global companies, including HSBC, Amazon, Standard Chartered and CBA have announced some jobs within their companies were being replaced by AI. OpenAI is preparing to confidentially file for a U.S. initial public offering in the coming weeks, Reuters reported last week, citing a source familiar with the matter. The company could be aiming for a $1 trillion valuation and raising at least $60 billion, Reuters reported in October. 'HUMAN PART' OF EMPLOYMENT IRREPLACEABLE Altman said he had realised that even though AI was taking on an increasingly active role in many industries and jobs, there was still a 'human part' of employment that could not be replaced. He said he had been using AI to respond to Slack and email messages but had reverted to answering some himself. "I had it reply to messages, saying 'this is Sam's AI' and it was an amazing example to me of we really do care about people," he said. "We really do care about our interactions with people and this thing, which is a huge amount of my time, is not something that I can imagine myself outsourcing to an AI anytime soon." That realisation, he said, had made him believe the human interaction required in many jobs would not be replaced by AI. "It really, in both positive and negative ways, updated me to thinking that the jobs picture is likely to be very different than we thought," he said. "I don't think we're going to have the kind of jobs apocalypse that some of the companies in our space advocate or talk about." (Reporting by Scott Murdoch; Editing by Muralikumar Anantharaman)