Altman questions the "job apocalypse" caused by AI

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman stated that the development of artificial intelligence is unlikely to lead to a global "job apocalypse." Reuters reports this.

According to him, AI has not yet caused the large-scale layoffs in office positions that he expected after the launch of ChatGPT in 2022.

"I'm glad I was wrong. It seemed that by this point, the impact on entry-level office jobs would be stronger," the entrepreneur said at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia conference in Sydney.

According to the CEO, the company "roughly correctly" assessed the technological development of LLMs but was mistaken in its predictions about their near-term social and economic consequences.

Altman noted that he previously considered the risk of widespread automation to be real and spoke about it publicly. He said that such a threat still may exist, but the situation now appears different.

He explained that in many professions, there remains a "human element" that is difficult to replace with algorithms. As an example, Altman mentioned that he tried using AI for responses in Slack and email but then returned to personal communication.

"We truly value interaction with people," he said.

In the opinion of the head of OpenAI, this experience changed his view of the future labor market. He believes that the employment picture will be "completely different" than many industry participants expected.

However, layoffs due to artificial intelligence still occur. In April, Oracle began reducing thousands of employees amid falling stock prices and large capital expenditures on AI infrastructure development.

In February, Block CEO Jack Dorsey announced the reduction of nearly 4,000 employees. The decision was related to the company's transition to a "more compact, flat, and AI-oriented" structure.

Recall that in May, China banned layoffs due to AI.