AI won't trigger 'jobs apocalypse' after all: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
New Delhi, May 26
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Tuesday said the rapid rise of artificial intelligence is unlikely to trigger the kind of global jobs apocalypse that many feared, admitting that his earlier concerns about massive white-collar job losses may have been overstated.
Speaking at a conference hosted by Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney, Altman said he had initially expected AI to eliminate a far greater number of entry-level white-collar jobs after the launch of ChatGPT in 2022.
However, he acknowledged that the impact on employment has so far been less severe than anticipated.
"I'm delighted to be wrong about this," Altman said during a conversation with CBA Chief Executive Matt Comyn.
"I thought there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than has actually happened," he mentioned.
Altman said OpenAI had been "roughly right" about the pace of technological progress in AI, but "pretty wrong" about the social and economic consequences. According to him, early fears around job destruction were driven by what appeared to be a genuine risk at the time.
"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," he said.
His remarks come at a time when several global firms, including HSBC, Amazon, Standard Chartered and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, have acknowledged that some roles within their organisations are being replaced or reshaped by AI-driven tools and automation.
Altman, however, said he has increasingly realised that human interaction remains an essential part of many jobs and cannot easily be replicated by machines.
He shared a personal example of experimenting with AI-generated replies for Slack and email messages before eventually returning to responding 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," Altman added.
— IANS
Reader Comments
I work in HR at a Bangalore-based MNC, and we've definitely seen a shift. But Altman has a point - jobs aren't disappearing, they're transforming. My team now uses AI for screening resumes, but we still need human judgement for cultural fit and soft skills. The key is upskilling, not panicking. 🇮🇳
Funny how he says he was "wrong" after creating all that fear. Sam Altman and his ilk hyped AI to sell subscriptions and now backtracking. Meanwhile, our call centre jobs are getting automated left and right. "Human interaction is essential" - tell that to the 10,000 Indians who lost jobs to chatbots last year. 😤
As a senior developer in Pune, I see both sides. AI has taken over mundane coding tasks, but that's actually good - it lets us focus on architecture and innovation. The real problem is that India's education system hasn't caught up. We need more reskilling programmes, not more fear-mongering from Silicon Valley billionaires. 👍
Altman saying "human interaction matters" while OpenAI keeps making AI more human-like is peak irony. But I appreciate him admitting his earlier stance was wrong - that's more than most tech leaders do. In India, we need to stop treating AI as a threat and start using it as a tool, like we did with computers. Slowly but surely. 😊
I'm a journalist, and we're already using AI for basic news reports. My job hasn't vanished, but it has changed dramatically. Altman's point about Slack
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