Sam Altman is stopping the business apocalypse, so put away your molotov cocktails. At a recent conference hosted by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, OpenAI’s CEO admitted that previous warnings about massive job losses and societal changes were wrong. (Okay, maybe not absolutely not right, but this public upheaval is more directed at him than he’d like, and now he’s trying to do some crisis management). He’s also very glad he was wrong, by the way, don’t forget that part!
“I’m glad I was wrong about that, I thought by now the elimination of white-collar jobs would have more impact than what actually happened,” he told the conference. According to Reuters. “Now I think I understand more why it’s not understood, and I’m obviously grateful, but it’s an area where my intuitions are off.”
It should be noted that Altman has been playing the “AI is coming for your job” drum for more than ten years. In 2015, he remarked: “My job is to help people destroy their jobs” – something he decided to do anyway, though he regretted it. In 2023, Altman said in a speech Interview with The Altantic“Many people working on artificial intelligence argue that it will only be good; it will only be additive; no one will ever be replaced. Things will definitely go away, come to a complete halt.” Even a few months ago he was claims Artificial intelligence will handle 40% of work tasks in the “not too distant future”.
Now, if you are a little cynical—and what reason have you been given for it? – you can assume that all the talk of massive job losses is just a way for Altman to create two things: investment from financiers who want to get into a machine that removes human labor from the profit margin, and control of an extremely powerful technology that only he and his team understand and therefore must control.
But you are wrong, you see. Altman is actually as comfortable as anyone with exaggerating the whole situation. (And there’s no better time to correct your position than after you’ve almost secured it It is valued at $1 trillion and is headed for an IPO). “People are like, ‘You could have saved the world from a lot of fear and a lot of doom and gloom,’ but at the time I said, ‘I see this is a real risk, we should probably talk about it,’ and we still might,” he told the conference.
Altman’s tune has been changing recently on the impact of artificial intelligence on jobs. Earlier this year, it started warning that corporations will use AI as an excuse for layoffs– it certainly happened. His company also recently announced a new initiative From the non-profit OpenAI Foundation, which will allocate $250 million for grants, partnerships and direct work.
At this point, it feels like it’s going to be a real uphill battle for OpenAI to change its reputation. Despite Altman’s new angle on job losses and the organization’s push to make it look like it’s helping workers, OpenAI won’t stop selling its technology to companies that will try to replace human labor with it, nor will it stop boasting about what its model has achieved.PhD level intelligence.”
At best, the company’s position seems to be: We actually hate how our technology is being used, there’s nothing we can do about it.
