OpenAI Sam Altman dismisses fears of AI job apocalypse: ‘I don’t think it’s coming’

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Tuesday dismissed all fears regarding the upcoming global job apocalypse fueled by artificial intelligence.

Speaking at a Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) conference in Sydney, Altman said initially he was worried about the impending impacts of AI on labour markets and global employment levels, but the technology had not claimed as many white-collar jobs as he had feared.

Altman told CBA Chief ​Executive Matt Comyn in an interview, "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,"

"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.”

According to Altman, in terms of “human part of employment”, AI is unable to replace human touch and interaction.

"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."

"It really, in both positive and negative ways, updated ​me to think that the job 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."

Altman’s remarks come in the midst of growing anxiety driven by AI-fueled mass layoffs. Various companies such as Amazon, Standard Charter, CBA, and HSBC have announced job cuts and replaced those roles with AI.

On Monday, Anthropic co-founder said, ““there is a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at a very large scale. If that happens, supporting ​those displaced will be a moral imperative of historic proportions.”

Similarly, earlier this week, Meta decided to layoff 8,000 employees in a major push to adopt AI tools for great efficiency and productivity.