Sam Altman and Anthropic’s CEO Just Walked Back Their Dire AI Layoff Warnings

New data, and reassurances from leading AI developers, suggest the work automating tech isn’t generating feared job destruction—yet, anyway.

BY BRUCE CRUMLEY @BRUCEC_INC

Illustration: Getty Images

Just who isn’t suffering from artificial intelligence (AI) whiplash these days? As many employers still wait for their spending on the tech to return promised productivity surges, employees continue working on, despite warnings of the job apocalypse that critics say the task automating tools will unleash. This week has brought more of that head-snapping contradiction, with a burst of news that will leave both business leaders and workers even less sure what to expect from spreading AI adoption.

On Monday, a flurry of headlines warned that a recent survey found 99 percent of responding executives said they expect layoffs driven in large part by AI over the next two years. By Tuesday, one of the tech’s leading proponents—OpenAI CEO Sam Altman—stepped up to throw cold water on the specter of the employment apocalypse he had himself previously warned of.

Speaking in Australia on Tuesday, Altman said he’d been “pretty wrong” about the countless workers he’d previously said risked being replaced by AI tools. In particular, he noted “I thought there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than ​has actually happened.” Stuff happens—and sometimes that stuff’s good.

Altman’s shift came about two weeks after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei similarly walked back earlier warnings of AI replacing innumerable human workers. Instead, Amodei said in revising that........

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