Sam Altman
CEO, OpenAI
Why they matterCEO of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT
- Status
- Closed
- Prediction made
- 2023
- Predicted arrival
- 2026
- Interval
- 3 yrs
“A lot of people working on AI pretend that it's only going to be good; it's only going to be a supplement; no one is ever going to be replaced. Jobs are definitely going to go away, full stop.”
Context
Speaking to The Atlantic in 2023, at the height of the post-ChatGPT displacement debate, Altman rejected the view that generative AI would only augment workers.
Why it is considered incorrect
Altman publicly retracted the near-term version of this forecast. At a Commonwealth Bank of Australia conference in Sydney in May 2026 he said: "I'm delighted to be wrong about this. I thought there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than has actually happened… that is an area where my intuitions were just off." He added that he and his colleagues had been "roughly right" on the technology but "pretty wrong" on its social and economic impact.