For three years, Sam Altman has pitched the imminent, wholesale disruption of the global economy. This week, staring down the barrel of an IPO - based on a business model that's actively being 'wholesale disrupted' by China - the OpenAI chief executive quietly admitted he got the timing wrong. Appearing on David Senra's Founders podcast, Altman conceded that the economic upheaval he forecast following GPT-4 simply hasn't materialized - and that society is adapting far more sluggishly than he anticipated."I thought when we got to GPT-4, which was back in 2023, that very quickly after that there was going to be much more disruption, software businesses up for grabs right away, than it turned out to be," Altman admitted.Of course, the technology isn't to blame... The problem, he said, is that human routine simply doesn't move that fast. "I think I was wrong about a few things, but one in terms of the speed: the economy just has so much inertia," said the guy who suggested letting AI entertain your kid in the car instead of talking to them. "People keep doing the same things, buying from the same company, wanting to use their tools the same way." Altman even admitted that he himself resists the AI coding tools his own company builds, defaulting to familiar workflows.Sam Altman admits he was wrong on AI's timeline and says society and the economy will adapt more slowly