Sam Altman pushes back on AI doom predictions, says job losses slower than feared

Sam Altman wants you to know that the sky isn’t falling. At least not as fast as some of his peers have been predicting. During a virtual conference on May 26, the OpenAI CEO addressed what has become one of the most anxiety-inducing questions in modern economics: will AI destroy your job? His answer was notably more measured than the fire-and-brimstone rhetoric that has dominated the conversation for the past few years. The 25% problem To understand Altman’s positioning, you need to understand who he’s distancing himself from. Dario Amodei, CEO of rival AI company Anthropic, has floated a probability of 10-25% that AI could lead to what the industry calls “p(doom),” essentially the chance of a catastrophic, world-ending outcome. Amodei has also warned that AI could eliminate half of entry-level white-collar jobs within one to five years. Altman isn’t buying it, or at least he’s not selling it anymore. “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.” What actually happened after ChatGPT When ChatGPT launched in late 2022, predictions of mass displacement were everywhere. Altman acknowledged this gap betw...