A year ago, the message from many business leaders was that AI was going to wipe out jobs. For the past month or so, tech CEOs have been striking a more optimistic tone.
In late May, OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman—who has long predicted that AI will lead to seismic shifts in the workforce—said during a conference, “We’ve been roughly right on technological predictions and pretty wrong on the social and economic implications.”
Soon after, he told CNBC, “Our industry underestimated how much we’re going to be able to keep people at the center of everything.”
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who warned in May 2025 that artificial intelligence could eliminate half of entry-level jobs, a year later highlighted more-positive scenarios for AI-adopting businesses: “They can do the same thing with less resources, and that leads to things like layoffs, or they can do more with the same amount of resources. But that requires creativity.”
In a June essay, the executive wrote that in giving warnings of job displacement, he wanted policymakers and the private sector to have the best chance at adapting—he wasn’t trying to be a “prophet of doom.” (He also wrote that the possibility of “enduring job loss” remains.)
Is the sunnier outlook a move to win back customers and the public who are souring on AI’s world-upending promise? Or is the role of AI in the workplace now just better understood?
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