Sam Altman is calling off the jobs apocalypse, so please put your molotov cocktails away. In a recent appearance at a conference hosted by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the CEO of OpenAI admitted that his previous warnings about mass job loss and societal upheaval were incorrect. (Well, maybe not totally incorrect, but that societal upheaval is more directed at him than he’d like, and now he’s trying to do some crisis management). He’s also very happy about being wrong, by the way, don’t forget that part!
“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,” he told the conference, according to 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.”
As a reminder, Altman has been banging the “AI is coming for your job” drum for more than a decade now. In 2015, he pointed out, “My job is to help people destroy jobs”—something he lamented but decided he’d just do anyway. In 2023, Altman said in an interview with The Altantic, “A lot of people working on AI pretend that it’s only going to be good; it’s only going to be a supplement; no one is ever going to be replaced. Jobs are definitely going to go away, full stop.” Even just a few months ago, he was claiming that AI would handle 40% of work tasks “in the not very distant future.”
Now, if you’re a bit of a cynic—and what reason have you been given to be that?—you might assume all of that talk of mass job loss was just a way for Altman to generate two things: investment from funders who want to be in on the machine that cuts human labor out of profit margins and control over the extremely powerful technology that only he and his team understand and therefore should be in control of.
But you’d be wrong, you see. Altman is actually as relieved as anyone to have overstated the whole situation. (And no better time to rectify your position than after you’ve secured a nearly $1 trillion valuation and are heading toward an IPO). “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 [be],” he told the conference.
Altman’s tune has been changing on AI’s impact on jobs lately. Earlier this year, he started warning that corporations would use AI as an excuse to carry out layoffs—which has undoubtedly happened. His company also recently announced a new initiative from the non-profit OpenAI Foundation that would make available $250 million for grants, partnerships, and direct work meant to help workers navigate any disruptions caused by the proliferation of AI.
At this point, it feels like it’s going to be a real uphill battle for OpenAI to flip its reputation. Even with Altman’s new angle on job loss and the organization’s push to appear like it’s helping workers, OpenAI isn’t going to stop selling its technology to companies that will try to replace human labor with it, nor will it stop bragging about things like its model achieving “PhD-level intelligence.”
At best, the company’s position seems to be: We actually hate how our technology is being used, it’s a real shame there’s nothing we can do about it.
