Sam Altman is challenging the idea that AI adoption is translating neatly into job cuts.<\/p>\n
He made the argument during a Monday interview on CNBC before celebrating the official groundbreaking for a massive, 1 gigawatt data center<\/a> 50 miles southwest of Detroit.<\/p>\n “The companies that I know that have adopted AI the most are also the ones hiring the most,” he said. “And the companies, as a general rule, that are talking about doing layoffs because of AI are the ones adopting AI the least.”<\/p>\n He added that AI can be a “convenient way” for companies to explain layoffs.<\/p>\n Altman said he remains unsure how AI will ultimately affect employment \u2014 but he said his view has become more optimistic after watching companies adopt OpenAI’s coding tools, including Codex.<\/p>\n “I think I underestimated how jagged these models are going to be,” he said. “They do some things incredibly well, but they don’t do kind of the long-term, complex task supervision well at all.”<\/p>\n AI anxiety<\/p>\n The comments come as workers are increasingly uneasy about what generative AI will mean for white-collar jobs. Some of the tech industry’s own leaders \u2014 including Microsoft AI’s CEO, Mustafa Suleyman<\/a>, and Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei<\/a> \u2014 have warned that AI could replace large numbers of workers.<\/p>\n Several tech companies have also cited AI while announcing job cuts<\/a>, including Block, Cisco, Coinbase, Snap, and Salesforce. <\/p>\n That anxiety is showing up in public opinion. A March Pew Research Center poll found that 50% of Americans were more concerned than excited about AI’s increased use in daily life, compared with 10% who were more excited than concerned. Meanwhile, data center projects have sparked protests in communities<\/a> across the country.<\/p>\n