OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said on Tuesday the rapid development and adoption of AI would not lead to a global “jobs apocalypse” and the technology had not claimed as many white-collar jobs as he had feared.
Speaking virtually at a Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) conference in Sydney, Altman said he was initially concerned about the impact AI would have on global employment levels.
He said he and his executives had been “roughly right” on the technological predictions made by OpenAI when it launched ChatGPT in 2022. But he said they were “pretty wrong” on 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 in an interview.
“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.
“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.”
Altman did not cite any jobs numbers on Tuesday but has previously talked about potential industry-wide job cuts due to AI’s advancement.
A growing number of global companies, including HSBC (HSBA.L), opens new tab, Amazon (AMZN.O), opens new tab, Standard Chartered (STAN.L), opens new tab and CBA (CBA.AX), opens new tab have announced some jobs within their companies were being replaced by AI.
OpenAI is preparing to confidentially file for a U.S. initial public offering in the coming weeks, Reuters reported last week, citing a source familiar with the matter. The company could be aiming for a $1 trillion valuation and raising at least $60 billion, Reuters reported in October.
