Sam Altman Says AI Job Fears Are Overblown — But Australia’s Tech Workers Aren’t So Sure

The man behind ChatGPT wants the world to take a breath. OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman pushed back against widespread fears that artificial intelligence is about to trigger a mass employment collapse, even as some of Australia’s biggest technology companies are already trimming their headcounts in the name of automation.

Altman made the remarks during a virtual appearance at the Commonwealth Bank’s Accelerate AI event in Sydney, where he sat down  remotely  with CBA chief executive Matt Comyn. His central message was a measured one: the employment fallout from AI is shaping up to be fundamentally different from what even the industry’s most informed voices anticipated.

“The jobs picture is likely to be very different than we thought,” Altman said at the event.

It was a notable admission from someone who has spent years at the epicentre of the AI revolution. Altman went further, saying he was “delighted to be wrong” about earlier forecasts suggesting entry-level white-collar positions would vanish quickly. He acknowledged that the industry still lacks a clear picture of how AI will ultimately reshape employment  but stressed that companies have an obligation to be transparent about those uncertainties rather than brushing them aside.

At the same time, Altman was candid about a gap between AI’s promise and its real-world delivery. Despite enormous investment and rapid capability improvements in generative AI tools, the technology has not yet translated into the sweeping productivity gains many businesses were banking on. “The question is, where is the revenue? Where are the actual productivity gains?” he said.

The Australian Context

Altman’s reassurances land against a backdrop of genuine anxiety in the local tech sector. Logistics software heavyweight WiseTech Global recently announced it plans to reduce its workforce by roughly one-third, pointing to the growing use of “agentic AI”  systems designed to carry out tasks with minimal human involvement  as the primary driver. The company’s CEO Zubin Appoo had signalled that manually writing code was becoming a relic of the past, framing the company’s direction as one of expanding total output through AI while pulling back on human labour.

The backlash inside WiseTech has been severe enough that the company reportedly tightened security at its Sydney headquarters following threats of violence directed at executives.

Australia’s major corporations more broadly are accelerating their AI experiments, rolling out the technology across customer service, software development and back-office functions. That momentum is sustaining a live debate about what, exactly, the future of office-based work looks like.

A Divided Industry

Altman is far from the only high-profile voice weighing in. Nvidia chief Jensen Huang has previously taken aim at what he sees as sensationalised warnings from some corners of the AI world. Anthropic chief executive Dario Amodei, by contrast, has been more sombre in his outlook, cautioning that the technology could wipe out a significant portion of entry-level office roles within the next few years.

For workers watching the headlines, the mixed signals from the industry’s top figures do little to settle the nerves – even if Altman himself seems fairly confident the apocalypse isn’t coming.