A HOT POTATO: OpenAI boss Sam Altman says he is delighted that the AI-caused jobs apocalypse he predicted has not come to pass – news that's unlikely to reassure anyone who's lost their job because of AI. It appears that the CEO's taking the view that although things are pretty bad, they're really not as bad as he expected.
Speaking virtually at a Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) conference in Sydney, Australia, Altman admitted that his early prediction that entire job classes would be wiped out by AI has not come true – at least not yet.
"My scorecard, at the highest level, would be we've been roughly right on technological predictions and pretty wrong on the social and economic implications," said the CEO.
Much like Anthropic boss Dario Amodei, Altman's biggest warning had been aimed at entry-level white-collar jobs, but he said the short-term impact had not been anywhere near as bad as he expected. "I'm delighted to be wrong about that," 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."
