OpenAI's Altman now says AI creates jobs, reversing earlier layoff warnings

Sam Altman and Dario Amodei made bold predictions about AI's destructive impact on employment, but both have now reversed course without citing new evidence that contradicts their earlier warnings. Instead, the body presents independent research showing that the job disruption they predicted has not yet materialized in measurable labor-market data. A multi-university study traced programmer and copywriter job losses to early 2022—well before ChatGPT's November 2022 launch—suggesting that if AI displaced those workers, the timeline does not align with the executives' public claims.

The disconnect is notable: AI layoffs have undeniably happened, yet no broad productivity or employment shift is visible in aggregate data. The article suggests that some of these layoffs may have been opportunistic—a means to redirect headcount budgets toward infrastructure spending or to provide shareholder-friendly messaging—rather than evidence of AI-driven workforce replacement. This gap between anecdotal layoffs and the absence of labor-market impact underscores the difficulty of attributing employment change to AI versus other business and economic pressures.