- Sam Altman says he doesn’t think AI will lead to a ‘jobs apocalypse’
- OpenAI CEO says human interaction will still be needed
- Altman says he uses AI to respond to Slack and emails
Sam Altman has denounced claims that the growing use of AI technology globally will lead to a “jobs apocalypse”, despite widespread reports that this is exactly what is happening in many sectors.
The OpenAI CEO also admitted that while he thought his company was “pretty much right” about the technology predictions it made when ChatGPT launched in 2022, it was “pretty wrong” about the social and economic implications.
Altman also noted that while he was initially concerned about the impact AI would have on global employment levels, he believed things were not as bad as many claimed.
“I’m happy to be wrong.”
“I’m happy to be wrong about that, I thought there would have been more impact on the elimination of entry-level white-collar jobs now than has actually happened,” Altman told CBA chief executive Matt Comyn in a virtual interview at a Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) conference in Sydney (via PK Press Club).
“I think now I have a better understanding of why that’s not the case, and I’m obviously grateful, but this is an area where my hunches were just wrong,” he added.
“People say to me, ‘oh, you could have saved the world from a lot of fear-mongering and a lot of pessimism,’ but at the time I was like, ‘I see it’s a real risk, we should probably talk about it,’ and it’s still possible.”
Altman’s comments come days after Meta laid off around 8,000 workers following several failed AI-related projects, and many others were forcibly reassigned to new AI work.
Banking giant Standard Chartered was also widely criticized recently after its CEO called workers “lower-value human capital”, shortly after cutting thousands of jobs in favor of AI tools.
Altman also revealed a little that he uses AI tools for his personal professional life, including having them respond to Slack and emails.
However, he noted that he has returned to answering some questions himself, because there is always a “human part” to the job that must be present.
“I received it in response to messages saying ‘this is Sam’s AI’ and it was an amazing example to me of how we really care about people,” he said.
“We really care about our interactions with people and this thing, which is extremely time-consuming, is not something I can imagine handing over to an AI anytime soon.”
Overall, Altman said these feelings made him realize that human workers will still have a place in most roles in the future.
“It really made me think, both positively and negatively, that the employment situation is probably going to be a lot different than we thought,” he said.
“I don’t think we’re going to have the kind of jobs apocalypse that some companies in our space are advocating for or talking about.”
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