Sam Altman says AI jobs apocalypse has not happened and his earlier fears were simply wrong

OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman has moved to dismiss widespread fears of an impending global jobs apocalypse driven by artificial intelligence, telling an audience in Sydney that the technology has not had the labour market impact he once anticipated.

Altman admits his predictions were off

Speaking at a Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) conference in Sydney on Tuesday, Altman revealed that whilst he had initially harboured genuine concerns about AI's effect on employment levels worldwide, those fears had not come to pass in the way he had expected.

In a candid interview with CBA chief executive Matt Comyn, Altman said: "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 continued: "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."

The irreplaceable human element

Altman also reflected on the distinctly human dimension of employment, suggesting that AI remains ill-equipped to replicate genuine human interaction and connection in the workplace.

"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 an AI anytime soon," he said.

He added: "It really, in both positive and negative ways, updated me to think that the job picture is likely to be very different than we thought."

"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," Altman concluded.

Remarks made amid growing layoff anxiety

Altman's comments arrive at a time of mounting anxiety surrounding AI-driven redundancies across major global corporations.

Companies including Amazon, Standard Chartered, CBA, and HSBC have all announced job cuts in recent months, with those roles subsequently replaced by artificial intelligence solutions.

The remarks also stand in notable contrast to views expressed by others in the industry. On Monday, an Anthropic co-founder warned that "there is a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at a very large scale. If that happens, supporting those displaced will be a moral imperative of historic proportions."

Earlier in the same week, Meta announced the layoff of 8,000 employees as part of a significant push to integrate AI tools aimed at greater efficiency and productivity across the business.