Sam Altman says AI jobs apocalypse unlikely, admits he was wrong about employment impact

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 and Anthropic dig in against each other on AI jobs apocalypse

Why it matters: The two leading AI labs are trading in hype and doom, making it nearly impossible for companies, policymakers, and the public to know what's coming. The big picture: A pair of public appearances this week highlighted how far apart Anthropic and OpenAI are. * Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, speaking at the Vatican's AI ethics conference, doubled down on rhetoric CEO Dario Amodei has used about the dangers of AI. "There is a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at very large scale," Olah said. * OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is sounding rosier about the tech. He said it's unlikely to cause a jobs apocalypse and that he was "wrong" about earlier projections that it would wipe out entire categories of jobs. * "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 Commonwealth Bank of Australia CEO Matt Comyn. Zoom in: A spate of tech company layoffs in recent weeks has given fresh fodder to the "doomer" camp. * Meta let go of nearly 8,000 employees, after projecting at least $125 billion in AI capital expenditures this year. * That came after Coinbase, Block, Pinterest, Shopify and others tied workforce restructurings to AI capabilities. * "AI costs a lot of money" and layoffs can offset those costs, Sophia Velastegui, Microsoft's former chief AI officer and now CEO at Velastegui Ventures, told Axios. Yes, but: There's also recent evidence pointing in the other direction. While unemployment has ticked up since 2023, it has predominantly been in sectors with the least exposure to AI, according to Stanford researchers. * Software engineering job openings on Indeed are up over 18% year over year, while all openings are down 4.3% over the same period. * LinkedIn's chief economist recently said AI has led to around 1.3 million new job postings. Reality check: Some technology giants are scaling back their AI usage after finding that the promise of huge productivity gains haven't materialized. * Uber's COO said AI costs are getting "harder to justify" weeks after his chief technology officer blew through his 2026 IT budget on AI usage. * Microsoft is winding down some of its Claude Code licenses, according to The Verge, a move Fortune tied to their enormous costs. The bottom line: No one really knows how the AI jobs story will play out. The most likely scenario: widespread displacement in some sectors, job growth in others, and an uneven transition that defies a clean narrative for either side.

Sam Altman Says AI 'Jobs Apocalypse' Probably Won't Happen. What Changed?

Throughout his rise to becoming one of the most influential CEOs in artificial intelligence, OpenAI's Sam Altman made repeated bold assertions about the impact that the new technology would have on jobs. He has said that AI will "probably replace most of the jobs people do today," that entire job categories will be "totally, totally gone," and that those impacted by the dramatic shifts will "find all sorts of new things to do". Now, however, Altman appears to have changed his tune, saying he is "delighted to be wrong" about the impact AI would have on employment.

AI leaders soften warnings on job losses as industry reassesses impact

AI leaders including Jensen Huang and Sam Altman are moderating earlier warnings about mass job losses from artificial intelligence, suggesting that previous "doomsday" predictions overstated the near-term impact on employment. The shift comes as public concern over workplace disruption from AI continues to grow across major economies. The most prominent figures in artificial intelligence are stepping back from dire predictions about mass unemployment, as the industry faces growing public hostility over AI's promised transformation of the workplace. Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, whose comments have stoked anxiety about AI's potential effects on society, are now arguing that doom-laden warnings were overblown or, in some cases, disingenuous. Speaking to Channel News Asia on Monday, Huang took direct aim at fellow executives who have publicly blamed AI for workforce reductions. "The narrative that connects AI to job loss, for many of the CEOs that are doing it - it is just too lazy," he said. "AI has just arrived. How is it possible they're already losing jobs?" Huang, who has long argued that AI will create as many jobs as it displaces, pushed back against the doom-and-gloom forecasts of some industry insiders, saying that the recent wave of corporate layoffs was not driven by AI. "How is it possible that AI became productive and useful only six months ago, and they were somehow laying people off two years ago because of AI? It doesn't make any sense," he said. "It was just a way for them to sound smart, and I really hate that. I think we're scaring people and that's irresponsible," he said. Altman's mea culpa Last week, British bank Standard Chartered announced plans to axe thousands of jobs by 2030 as artificial intelligence replaces employees in a range of administrative roles. The tech firm behind social network Snapchat cut 1,000 jobs last month, saying AI is boosting efficiency as it pushes towards profitability. Altman, meanwhile, offered a mea culpa. Speaking at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia's Accelerate AI Conference in Sydney, he said rapid AI development would not produce the "jobs apocalypse that some of the companies in our space advocate or talk about" - including his own. "I thought there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than has actually happened," he told the conference on Tuesday, as reported by The Australian. "I think I understand more about why that wasn't done - obviously gratefully - but that is an area where my intuitions were just off." Anthropic boss Dario Amodei has also softened his tone, predicting recently that even if 90 percent of jobs are automated, the remaining 10 percent would be handled by human workers who would be vastly more productive. Amodei has long drawn criticism from fellow industry figures who regard him as an AI doomer, even as Anthropic has become a highly successful company, with Huang saying last year he "pretty much disagrees with almost everything he says." The reversals from rivals Altman and Amodei come as their companies - OpenAI and Anthropic - are expected to embark on high-profile IPOs that will require broad buy-in from investors to succeed. But earlier doom-laden statements have now come to haunt the AI industry as the public, notably in the United States, voices serious discontent in polling over the disruption that tech companies and political leaders predict from AI. Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook warned on Wednesday that the full effects of AI on employment may still be ahead. "We could be approaching the most significant reorganisation of work in generations," she said in a speech at Stanford University, adding that AI-related job losses could precede any gains - even if the overall long-run picture remains positive. Most economic institutions, including the European Central Bank, say that artificial intelligence has had only minor effects on employment so far.

'I don't think we're going to have the kind ​of jobs apocalypse that some...advocate or talk about': OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says he's 'delighted to be wrong' about AI-induced job cuts

Let's see if he changes his tune when AI agents take over from CEOs. If you have been keeping a close eye on news reports about companies dropping employees and replacing them with AI, and you're worried about what the future holds for your own job, then you're not alone. But don't fret: OpenAI's Sam Altman reckons that it's not going to be as bad as you might think, and that a "jobs apocalypse" isn't likely to happen. Just so that everyone is reading from the same script here, I'm being sarcastic when I say 'don't fret.' That's because, despite Altman saying, at a Commonwealth Bank of Australia conference (via Reuters), "I thought there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than has actually happened," the evidence of the true scale of AI-induced job cuts makes for grim reading. In this month alone, Intuit dropped 3,000 staff, and Meta let go of more than double that number. Standard Chartered's CEO said it plans to replace almost 8,000 "lower-value human capital" roles with AI, and HSBC's boss told staff that they shouldn't be "resisting the change," because "generative AI will destroy certain jobs and will create new jobs." As for the scale of the various cuts, it obviously depends on the total number of employees, but in some cases it's as high as 17%. That's roughly in line with OpenAI's own research into the impact of AI in the jobs market (PDF warning), though less than its first predictions on the matter two years ago. Which makes me wonder just what figures Altman has been looking at to conclude that things aren't as bad as he thought they would be. Still, OpenAI's CEO did have a somewhat fatalistic view of certain job roles due to the rise of generative AI, so this may all be just 'gut feelings', current vs past. Advances in technology have always affected long-held traditional roles. For example, the manufacturing of cars adopted the use of robotics for welding, painting, installation, quality control checks, and so on many years ago. This was highly beneficial for the companies, but it certainly had a negative impact on employment levels. Naturally, just because Altman thinks it's not as bad as he thought it means nothing to those who have already been affected. What's needed now is a wholly independent and non-biased examination of how much damage AI has done to the jobs market. No matter how good the research is, anything done by a body or company that is directly involved in the whole situation simply can't be relied upon to produce reliable data and predictions. Unfortunately, this will take some time to complete, and by then, hundreds of thousands of jobs could have been lost around the world to chatbots and AI agents. Perhaps if Altman met with every one of those people made redundant, he'd possibly have a different view of what a "jobs apocalypse" actually feels like.

Sam Altman is "delighted to be wrong" about AI destroying jobs

Unlike some of his industry peers, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has been surprisingly skeptical of the notion that AI is displacing workers. In an interview a few months ago, he argued that AI was a convenient scapegoat for some companies, echoing what some economists and experts have expressed about the narrative that AI is driving layoffs across corporate America. "I don't know what the exact percentage is, but there's some AI washing where people are blaming AI for layoffs that they would otherwise do. And then there's some real displacement by AI of different kinds of jobs," Altman said at the time. In an interview this week, however, Altman made a bolder statement, suggesting there was little evidence AI would do extensive damage to white-collar jobs, despite predictions to the contrary. "I'm delighted to ⁠be wrong about this," he said on Tuesday during a virtual appearance at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia conference, according to a Reuters report. "I thought there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than has actually happened."

Sam Altman Warned AI Could Lead to a 'Jobs Apocalypse' -- Now He Says He Is 'Delighted to Be Wrong'

It took some autoreplies on Slack and email to convince Sam Altman that he was mistaken about the AI causing an entry-level jobs apocalypse. The OpenAI CEO said Tuesday that AI has not wiped out white-collar jobs as fast as he once feared, according to Reuters. Speaking virtually at a Commonwealth Bank of Australia conference in Sydney, he said he had expected far more positions to vanish by now. "I'm delighted to be wrong about this," he said. What changed his mind was surprisingly personal. Altman had been using AI to answer his Slack and email messages, even setting it to reply on his behalf. The experiment backfired after he realized how much he valued genuine human interaction. That "human part" of work, he concluded, can't easily be outsourced to machines. His new outlook arrives as OpenAI prepares to confidentially file for a U.S. IPO that could value the company at $1 trillion.

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."

Sam Altman Says AI Will Not Lead To A Global 'Jobs Apocalypse' - Salesforce (NYSE:CRM), Goldman Sachs Gro

Sam Altman, arguably the most public-facing executive in the current AI wave, doesn't want you to worry about a "job apocalypse." Speaking at a Commonwealth Bank of Australia conference in Sydney, Altman pushed back on dire industry predictions of an AI-driven labor disruption. "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," he told CBA Chief Executive Matt Comyn. Altman's comments come despite several major companies citing AI as the reason behind their mass lay-offs and downsizing. 'I'm Delighted To Be Wrong About This' Altman said OpenAI leaders had been "roughly right" about the technology's trajectory after ChatGPT's 2022 debut, but "pretty wrong" about social and economic impacts. "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 said. He added that he still views the risk as worth discussing, even if the worst outcomes have not shown up yet. "People are like 'oh you could have saved the world a lot of fearmongering and a lot of doom and gloom," Altman added. "But at the time I was, like, I see this is a real risk we should probably talk about it and it still may." 'We Really Do Care' Altman also pointed to a "human part" of work that he now thinks is harder to automate away than he previously believed. He described testing AI-generated replies for Slack and email, including messages labeled "this is Sam's AI," before deciding to personally handle some conversations again. "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," Altman said. He said that shift in perspective changed his view of how AI could reshape employment across many roles. OpenAI reportedly filed its IPO paperwork confidentially in May 2026, aiming for a massive public listing in September or October. OpenAI has been associated with discussions that include a potential $1 trillion valuation and a capital raise of at least $60 billion, Reuters previously reported. Photo: Shutterstock This content was partially produced with the help of AI tools and was reviewed and published by Benzinga editors. Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.

OpenAI's Sam Altman Retracts AI Job Cut Prediction | PYMNTS.com

By completing this form, you agree to receive marketing communications from PYMNTS and to the sharing of your information with our sponsor, if applicable, in accordance with our Privacy Policy and Terms and Conditions. Speaking at a conference Tuesday (May 26), Sam Altman acknowledged that a "jobs apocalypse" triggered by artificial intelligence (AI) adoption has not come to pass. "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," said Altman, whose comments at a Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) conference in Sydney were reported by Reuters. "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," Altman said. "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 said he and his fellow executives had been "roughly right" on the predictions they made when OpenAI introduced ChatGPT in 2022, but were "pretty wrong" on the technology's social and economic impact. The executive's comments came a little more than a week after Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman similarly rejected the idea of an AI-related job apocalypse. "Everybody's entitled to their opinion, but I don't think that's true," Garman said when asked by The Wall Street Journal about predictions that artificial intelligence would cause unemployment on the level seen during the Great Depression. "I think it's the potential to create massive value, and I think there's going to be new and different types of jobs," Garman said. As Reuters notes, a growing number of companies -- such as HSBC, Amazon, Standard Chartered and CBA -- have announced that some of their jobs would be replaced with AI. But although these cuts tend to trigger fears about a broader employment crisis, current labor research presents a more complex picture, PYMNTS wrote earlier this year. At the time, the World Economic Forum had just argued that while automation and AI will displace some tasks, they will also bring about new categories of work, especially in data, AI oversight, cybersecurity and human-centric services. "The pressure is real, but it is directional. Roles centered on routine information processing are most exposed," PYMNTS wrote. "Roles combining domain expertise, judgment and technological fluency are expanding."

AI chiefs walk back job apocalypse warnings

The most prominent figures in artificial intelligence are stepping back from dire predictions about mass unemployment, as the industry faces growing public hostility over AI's promised transformation of the workplace. Nvidia chief executive Jensen Huang and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, whose comments have stoked anxiety about AI's potential effects on society, are now arguing that doom-laden warnings were overblown or, in some cases, disingenuous. Speaking to Channel News Asia on Monday, Huang took direct aim at fellow executives who have publicly blamed AI for workforce reductions. "The narrative that connects AI to job loss, for many of the CEOs that are doing it -- it is just too lazy," he said. "AI has just arrived. How is it possible they're already losing jobs?" Huang, who has long argued that AI will create as many jobs as it displaces, pushed back against the doom-and-gloom forecasts of some industry insiders, saying that the recent wave of corporate layoffs was not driven by AI. "How is it possible that AI became productive and useful only six months ago, and they were somehow laying people off two years ago because of AI? It doesn't make any sense," he said. "It was just a way for them to sound smart, and I really hate that. I think we're scaring people and that's irresponsible," he said. Last week, British bank Standard Chartered announced plans to axe thousands of jobs by 2030 as artificial intelligence replaces employees in a range of administrative roles. The tech firm behind social network Snapchat cut 1,000 jobs last month, saying AI is boosting efficiency as it pushes towards profitability. Altman, meanwhile, offered a mea culpa. Speaking at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia's Accelerate AI Conference in Sydney, he said rapid AI development would not produce the "jobs apocalypse that some of the companies in our space advocate or talk about" -- including his own. "I thought there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than has actually happened," he told the conference on Tuesday, as reported by The Australian. "I think I understand more about why that wasn't done -- obviously gratefully -- but that is an area where my intuitions were just off." Anthropic boss Dario Amodei has also softened his tone, predicting recently that even if 90 percent of jobs are automated, the remaining 10 percent would be handled by human workers who would be vastly more productive. Amodei has long drawn criticism from fellow industry figures who regard him as an AI doomer, even as Anthropic has become a highly successful company, with Huang saying last year he "pretty much disagrees with almost everything he says." The reversals from rivals Altman and Amodei come as their companies -- OpenAI and Anthropic -- are expected to embark on high-profile IPOs that will require broad buy-in from investors to succeed. But earlier doom-laden statements have now come to haunt the AI industry as the public, notably in the United States, voices serious discontent in polling over the disruption that tech companies and political leaders predict from AI. Most economic institutions, most recently the European Central Bank, say that artificial intelligence has had only minor effects on employment so far.

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)

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman says AI unlikely to cause jobs apocalypse, here is why

Even though AI tools are becoming more common in workplaces, Altman believes human interaction still plays a major role in many jobs. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has said that AI has not replaced as many entry-level white-collar jobs as he had earlier feared. Speaking at a conference hosted by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney, Altman admitted that some of his earlier concerns about AI's impact on jobs were wrong. He said that while he and his executives were "roughly right" about the technological predictions OpenAI made when it launched ChatGPT in 2022, they were "pretty wrong" about its social and economic impact. "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 said, reports Reuters. He added, "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." Also read: Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says journalism, arts and storytelling will remain valuable in AI future Altman also reflected on the warnings he previously gave about AI-related job losses. According to him, the concerns were genuine at the time. He said, "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." Even though AI tools are becoming more common in workplaces, Altman believes human interaction still plays a major role in many jobs. He shared a personal example, saying he once used AI to reply to Slack and email messages on his behalf but later started responding himself again. Also read: AI will wipe out millions of jobs, says Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah "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. Altman added that this experience changed the way he looks at AI and employment. He now feels many jobs will continue to require a human touch that AI cannot fully replace. "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," he said.