The man building what he believes will be the most transformative technology in human history just admitted it hasn’t transformed much yet. At least not on the employment front.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told attendees at a Commonwealth Bank of Australia AI conference in Sydney on May 26 that artificial intelligence is unlikely to trigger a “jobs apocalypse,” noting that fewer entry-level white-collar positions have disappeared than he originally anticipated. He described himself as “delighted to be wrong” about the social fallout he once feared.
The guy building the robot says the robot won’t take your job
He didn’t say AI won’t change jobs. He said the wholesale destruction of white-collar employment that many predicted, himself included, simply hasn’t materialized. The entry-level positions that seemed most vulnerable to automation have proven stickier than expected.
Altman pointed to the irreplaceable nature of personal interactions in the workplace as one reason. He noted that he personally chooses to handle certain communications himself rather than delegating them to AI, emphasizing what he called the “human part” of employment.
Altman acknowledged that AI technology has not yet generated substantial revenue or productivity gains at scale.
He’s not alone in the reassurance business
Altman isn’t the only executive walking back the doomsday predictions. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon has described fears of mass unemployment caused by AI as “overblown.”
Altman himself acknowledged that new job creation resulting from AI advancements will be difficult to predict.
Australian tech firm WiseTech recently announced layoffs affecting a third of its staff, a move that sparked significant internal unrest and even reported threats of violence against its CEO. The juxtaposition of Altman’s reassurances with real-world layoffs at AI-adjacent companies illustrates the uneven nature of this transition.
What this means for investors
For anyone with capital deployed in AI or the broader tech sector, Altman’s candor about the revenue gap deserves serious attention. If the CEO of OpenAI is publicly acknowledging that AI hasn’t delivered meaningful productivity gains at scale, the valuations baked into many AI-related equities and tokens may be running ahead of fundamentals.