Sam Altman has some reassuring words for those who fear that artificial intelligence (AI) could trigger a global “job apocalypse.” According to a Reuters report, the chief executive of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI said he was wrong to expect AI to have already eliminated more entry-level white-collar jobs, adding that the employment impact has been less severe than he initially feared. Speaking virtually at a conference hosted by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in Sydney, Altman said that he and his company’s executives had been “roughly right” about OpenAI’s predictions when it launched ChatGPT in 2022. However, he acknowledged they were “pretty wrong” about the social and economic implications.“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 told CBA Chief Executive Matt Comyn, Reuters reported.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.”The OpenAI chief said concerns about AI-driven job losses were genuine at the time and that discussions about potential risks were necessary.“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,” he said.
Why Sam Altman now thinks AI may not replace as many jobs
Altman said his views shifted partly because of the importance of human interaction in many professions. He suggested some aspects of work remain difficult to replace with AI systems.“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 at the event, the Reuters report added.According to Altman, that realisation changed how he views the future of employment. He explained, “It really, in both positive and negative ways, updated me to thinking that the jobs picture is likely to be very different than we thought.”He also pushed back against predictions of widespread employment disruption, adding, “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 did not provide specific employment figures during the discussion, though he has previously spoken about the possibility of industry-wide job cuts linked to advances in AI.
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