Sam Altman says AI has not wiped out entry-level white-collar jobs as quickly as he once expected.
Speaking at a Commonwealth Bank of Australia summit in Sydney, the OpenAI CEO said he was “delighted to be wrong” about the pace of AI-driven job displacement. His comments come as companies continue to cite AI in workforce reductions, raising questions about whether the technology is replacing workers outright or reshaping how their jobs get done.
Now, Altman is pushing back against the idea that AI will trigger the kind of white-collar jobs apocalypse some in Silicon Valley have predicted.
Altman reconsiders his AI jobs forecast
During a virtual Commonwealth Bank of Australia summit in Sydney, Altman said his earlier concerns about AI’s impact on jobs had not played out as expected. He added that he was “delighted” to be wrong.
“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 said.
Altman added: “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.”
Why Altman doesn’t foresee an AI jobs apocalypse
AI’s slower-than-expected impact on white-collar jobs may reflect both the technology’s current limits and the way companies are choosing to deploy it.
According to Altman, many roles still depend on a “human part” that AI cannot easily replace. He pointed to his own work as an example, saying he once used AI to handle all his Slack and email messages but has since started responding to some of them himself. The example suggests that even where AI can speed up communication, some interactions still require personal judgment, context, or trust.
“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 any AI anytime soon,” he said.
Still, Altman’s comments do not mean AI has had no effect on jobs. Companies have already cited AI in workforce reductions, and many employers are under pressure to prove the technology can cut costs or raise productivity. That makes his revised view less a dismissal of worker concerns than a more cautious reading of how fast the disruption may unfold.
“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,” he said.
Coming from one of the most influential figures in AI, the shift is notable. Altman now appears to see automation as something that may reshape many roles before it eliminates them outright. Whether that view changes how employers talk about AI-driven cuts, or how quickly they pursue them, remains to be seen.
The debate over OpenAI’s role in the future of work comes as the company recently faced another high-profile challenge: Elon Musk’s lawsuit.