Sam Altman Says AI ‘Jobs Apocalypse’ Probably Won’t Happen. What Changed?

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Sam Altman Says AI ‘Jobs Apocalypse’ He Once Predicted Probably Won’t Happen. What Changed?

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by Rebecca Schneid

Reporter

May 26, 2026 7:28 PM CUT

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the BlackRock Infrastructure Summit on March 11, 2026 in Washington, DC.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the BlackRock Infrastructure Summit on March 11, 2026 in Washington, DC.Anna Moneymaker—Getty Images

by Rebecca Schneid

Reporter

May 26, 2026 7:28 PM CUT

Throughout his rise to becoming one of the most influential CEOs in artificial intelligence, OpenAI’s Sam Altman made repeated bold assertions about the impact that the new technology would have on jobs.

He has said that AI will “probably replace most of the jobs people do today,” that entire job categories will be “totally, totally gone,” and that those impacted by the dramatic shifts will “find all sorts of new things to do".

Now, however, Altman appears to have changed his tune, saying he is “delighted to be wrong” about the impact AI would have on employment.

Read More : The Real Economics of AI and Jobs

"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," he said during a virtual interview at a Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) conference in Sydney on Tuesday.

“I thought there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than ​has actually happened," Altman said.

“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.”

Altman went on to explain that the “human part” of employment could not be replaced by AI, and that people care about interacting with each other at work.

"We really do care about our interactions with people,” he added, which he said—for better or worse—"updated me to thinking that the jobs picture is likely to be very different than we thought."

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OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment from TIME.

What changed Sam Altman's mind?

Altman’s apparent about-face comes at a pivotal moment for the AI industry. Three of the biggest AI companies on the planet are heading towards public offerings: SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic are planning to soon ask for investor cash to meet eye-watering growth targets.

OpenAI aims to reach $280 billion in revenue by 2030, up from $25 billion today.  SpaceX is hoping for a $1.5 trillion valuation in its initial public offering (IPO). And Anthropic is reportedly in talks to secure $30 billion in funding with a valuation of a $900 billion, according to the Financial Times.

Despite those numbers, there have been signs that some companies are struggling to find value in AI use.

Uber's President and Chief Operating Officer, Andrew Macdonald, also said in a recent podcast interview posted May 22 that it is becoming harder and harder to justify AI costs in the company. The company’s Chief Technology Officer, Praveen Neppalli Naga, went viral in April for admitting Uber burned through its 2026 Claude Code budget in four months.

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Last month, Bryan Catanzaro, vice president of applied deep learning at Nvidia, suggested that AI use isn’t actually saving companies from labor costs, and could cost them more than the humans they currently employ.

“For my team, the cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees,” he told Axios.

Microsoft, too, has raised concerns about the costs of AI. The company has reportedly begun canceling licenses for its engineers to use Anthropic’s Claude due to high costs, raising questions about the costs of adoption.

Economists and experts differ widely in their beliefs about whether AI will actually lead to a “job apocalypse.”

“Forecasting economic impacts from AI is inherently speculative and uncertain, and the economists I’ve talked to disagree on how much it will reshape the labor market," Peter Wildeford, Head of Policy at the AI Policy Network, tells TIME.

"One of the most uncertain aspects," he says, "is ‘reallocation’: if you imagine AI completely automates away some categories of work, do those workers stay unemployed, or do they find new professions?”

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Wildeford suggests one potential reason for Altman's change of tune: public opinion.

“Public opinion research has made pretty clear that Americans feel quite negative about AI,” he says. “The AI industry, and in particular Sam Altman, has responded with an about-face: it’s not going to replace most white collar workers, it’s actually going to create tons of jobs, and any pain along the way is temporary. It’s hard to say whether they’ve actually changed their forecasts for AI’s economic impact, or whether they’re just trying to change the narrative.”

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