Sam Altman has said artificial intelligence (AI) has not caused the wave of white-collar job losses he once feared, admitting that some of his earlier concerns about AI’s economic impact were wrong.
Speaking at a conference hosted by Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney on Tuesday, Sam Altman said he expected entry-level office jobs to disappear much faster after the launch of ChatGPT in 2022.
Instead, he said the reality has been different because many jobs still depend heavily on human interaction.
“I’m delighted to be wrong about this,” Altman said during a discussion with CBA chief executive Matt Comyn. “I thought there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than has actually happened.”
Altman added that he now understands why the disruption has been slower than expected.
“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,” he said.
The OpenAI boss explained that while AI tools can handle technical tasks, many people still prefer dealing with humans directly. He said he once experimented with using AI to reply to Slack and email messages but later returned to answering some personally.
“We really do care about people,” Altman said. “We really do care about our interactions with people.”
That experience, he said, changed how he thinks about the future of work and the role AI will play inside companies.
“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.
Even so, several large companies have already linked job cuts and restructuring to AI adoption. Firms including HSBC, Amazon, Standard Chartered and Commonwealth Bank of Australia have said automation and AI tools are changing staffing needs in some departments.
Matt Comyn said AI would likely lead to smaller teams in some parts of the economy, although workers may also progress faster as technology handles routine tasks.
CBA has been investing heavily in AI and staff training as banks prepare for wider adoption of the technology. According to the bank, it plans to spend about A$90 million on reskilling programmes while annual technology investment has reached A$2.4 billion.
Altman also said AI technology is advancing faster than many businesses and institutions can absorb. While AI tools have improved rapidly, he believes enterprise adoption is still at an early stage.
He said OpenAI had been “roughly right” about the pace of technological development but “pretty wrong” about the social and economic consequences.
The remarks come as OpenAI prepares for a possible stock market listing in the United States. Reuters reported last week that the company plans to confidentially file for an initial public offering in the coming weeks.
The report said OpenAI could seek a valuation of about $1 trillion and raise at least $60 billion, which would place it among the world’s most valuable technology companies.
