Sam Altman Says AI Will Make People Busier, Not Replace Them, Despite Labor Market Disruption

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman believes artificial intelligence will make people busier rather than replace them, despite acknowledging significant transition and disruption in the labor market as new technologies are adopted.

In a series of posts on social media platform X, the OpenAI chief executive said the company aims to "build tools to augment and elevate people, not entities to replace them." He added that predictions of widespread job losses due to AI are "likely long-term wrong," though he cautioned that "the jobs of the future may look very different."

Altman did not provide timelines for the transitions he described, but reiterated that disruption is expected as industries adapt to new tools.

The development follows a Financial Times report in late March stating that OpenAI plans to nearly double its workforce to 8,000 from 4,500 by the end of 2026. OpenAI plans to deploy most of the new hires across product development, engineering, research and sales, according to FT.

Altman's comments come amid an intensifying global debate over the economic impact of generative AI systems, including large language models and automation tools that are increasingly being integrated into enterprise workflows.

In a separate post, Altman wrote, "Artificial goblin intelligence achieved," without elaborating.

In a blog post recently, Altman also shared a set of five guiding principles that he says will shape the development of artificial general intelligence (AGI). The five principles are: democratisation, empowerment, universal prosperity, resilience, and adaptability.

"Power in the future can either be held by a small handful of companies using and controlling superintelligence, or it can be held in a decentralised way by people. We believe the latter is much better, and our goal is to put truly general AI in the hands of as many people as possible," Altman said.

In line with this, OpenAI's coding agent Codex has already been in place to transform workflows with AI. Codex now has over 4 million weekly developers. The coding assistant is now being used for tasks such as browser-based work, image generation, and turning information into outputs such as briefs, plans, and follow-ups.

Similarly, companies like Anthropic and Microsoft have also launched similar products. Claude Cowork by Anthropic, which can automate enterprise processes across functions, has triggered a debate about its possible fallout on the Indian IT and the software as a service (SaaS) industry.

CEO Dario Amodei has also repeatedly spoken about AI's growing ability to automate "white-collar" and professional work roles once considered safe from automation.

Microsoft had also unveiled Copilot Cowork in testing mode capitalising on the growing demand for autonomous AI agents.

OpenAI's latest funding round valued it at $840 billion, as Big Tech and Masayoshi Son's Softbank joined its blockbuster $110 billion round.