OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that the advancement of artificial intelligence is unlikely to lead to a global "job apocalypse." This was reported by Reuters.
According to him, AI has not yet caused the widespread reduction of office jobs that he anticipated following the launch of ChatGPT in 2022.
"I’m glad I was wrong. It seemed that by this time the impact on entry-level office positions would be stronger," the entrepreneur said at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia conference in Sydney.
Altman noted that the company had assessed the technological development of large language models (LLMs) "about right," but misjudged their immediate social and economic implications.
He mentioned that he previously viewed the risk of mass automation as real and spoke about it publicly. While he believes such a threat may still exist, the current situation appears different.
He explained that many professions still involve a "human element" that is difficult to replace with algorithms. For instance, Altman shared that he tried using AI for responses in Slack and email but eventually returned to personal communication.
"We really value interaction with people," he stated.
According to the OpenAI head, this experience has altered his perception of the future job market. He believes the employment landscape will be "quite different" than many industry participants expected.
However, layoffs due to artificial intelligence are still occurring. In April, Oracle began cutting thousands of jobs amid falling stock prices and significant capital expenditures on AI infrastructure development.
In February, Block CEO Jack Dorsey announced the reduction of nearly 4,000 employees. This decision is part of the company's shift to a "more compact, flat, and AI-focused" structure.
It is worth noting that in May, China banned layoffs due to AI.