Sam Altman: AI Jobs Apocalypse Unlikely
May 26, 2026 – 7:59 am
The OpenAI chief, speaking in the Asia-Pacific, walked back the more dramatic predictions of broad employment collapse. The data, so far, agrees with him.
Sam Altman said on Tuesday that artificial intelligence was unlikely to trigger the broad employment collapse known as the jobs apocalypse, even as he conceded that specific categories of work, including customer support, will largely disappear.
The remarks, reported by Reuters from an Asia-Pacific appearance, mark a notable softening of tone from executives who previously warned about AI-driven labor disruption. Altman himself has recently described customer service jobs as "totally, totally gone" in the near future. However, his newer framing emphasizes significant sectoral churn rather than an economy-wide collapse in headcount.
The Yale Budget Lab, tracking AI’s effect on US labor markets since ChatGPT’s release, found no meaningful changes in occupational mix or unemployment durations through March 2026 for high-AI-exposure jobs. Similarly, the Brookings Institution concluded earlier this year that there is no apocalypse, at least not yet.
Altman has been more specific about certain roles: customer service work done over phone or computer will be replaced by AI within the next few years. Coding, meanwhile, has already changed with engineers shifting from writing code to architecture, system design, and reviewing AI-generated work.
His recent travel itinerary underscores this message. Altman visited Tokyo to meet SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba, and attended a developer event in Seoul hosted by OpenAI.