Sam Altman: AI adoption correlates with hiring, not layoffs

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is pushing back against the growing belief that AI is directly causing widespread job losses. Speaking in an interview with CNBC on June 1, Sam Altman argued that companies embracing AI the most are often the same companies that continue to hire workers, while firms blaming layoffs on AI may not be using the technology extensively at all. “The companies that I know that have adopted A.I. the most are also the ones hiring the most," Altman said. "And the companies, as a general rule, that are talking about doing layoffs because of A.I. are the ones adopting A.I. the least," he added. The OpenAI CEO further goes on to say that AI can sometimes become "a convenient way" for companies to explain job cuts.

Sam Altman makes a u-turn on AI-driven job cuts

Sam Altman’s latest remarks marks a u-turn from his previous statements when he said that entire job categories can be wiped out by AI. in 2025, Altman told Federal Reserve vice-chair for supervision Michelle Bowman that "some areas" in the job market will be "just like totally, totally gone" as they're replaced by AI agents. Same year, he suggested that the types of jobs that are being eliminated or transformed by artificial intelligence (AI) may not be considered "real work" in the long run. The comments come at a time when concerns about AI-driven job displacement are growing across industries. Executives including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman have warned that AI could significantly reshape the labour market and replace many existing jobs. Several major technology companies, including Salesforce, Cisco, Coinbase, Snap and Block, have also referenced AI while discussing layoffs or restructuring efforts. Altman, however, said his observations from companies using OpenAI's tools suggest a more complicated picture.

Sam Altman says he underestimated AI’s impact on jobs

Despite the debate around AI-layoffs, Sam Altman said he has become more optimistic about AI's impact on employment after seeing how businesses are actually using OpenAI's coding tools, including Codex. "I think I underestimated how jagged these models are going to be," he said. "They do some things incredibly well, but they don't do kind of the long-term, complex task supervision well at all." According to Sam Altman, the most successful users are combining AI with human expertise rather than replacing workers entirely. "And so watching people who are really good at using these models, they can do an amazing amount of work, create way more economic value than people without models could or certainly the models could on their own," he said.

Sam Altman says people will remain at the centre

The OpenAI CEO also argued that human interaction remains an important part of how businesses and society function. "People really like other people and want to interact with other people. They want to collaborate. They work with other people," Altman said during the interview. "When they buy a product, they want to talk to a person at the company." He added that many people still value human creators over AI-generated content. "Most people, I think, don't want to watch an A.I.-generated creator. They want to know about the person behind it." "I think our industry underestimated how much we're going to be able to keep people at the center of everything in an economy that is and a world that is based on people," he added.