Fresh remarks from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman suggest that artificial intelligence may not disrupt global employment as aggressively as many initially feared. Speaking at a banking conference in Sydney, Altman said the real-world impact of AI on white-collar jobs has been slower and less severe than expected.
Sam Altman says AI may not trigger massive global job losses
During a discussion at a conference hosted by Commonwealth Bank of Australia, Altman reflected on OpenAI’s predictions since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022. He said the company had been largely accurate about AI’s technological progress but admitted its expectations around social and economic disruption were not entirely correct.
“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 concerns around AI replacing jobs were genuine at the time, even though the expected disruption has not happened at the same scale yet.
“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 also explained that he now better understands the importance of human interaction in professional communication. He revealed that he had experimented with using AI to respond to Slack and email messages but later returned to replying personally in some situations.
“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.
According to Altman, this experience reinforced the idea that many jobs still depend heavily on human connection and trust, making full automation less likely in the near future.
The comments come at a time when several global companies, including HSBC, Amazon, Standard Chartered, and Commonwealth Bank of Australia, have acknowledged using AI to replace or automate certain job functions.
Altman also said the future of employment could look very different from earlier predictions and added, “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.”
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