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Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

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Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

#141

Post by uejfiweun »

pbohun wrote: post #129
jijijijij wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you telling me I only have to wait just a little longer and the GPU are going to be really, really cheap?

No, the GPUs used in AI data centers don't have the capability to do normal graphics. They're completely useless for games and content creation. Additionally, B200s can consume up to 14kW of power. There are no consumer power supplies that could power such a thing. The sad thing is all that silicon will basically be worthless.

Prediction: it's not gonna be worthless for games. This is what's gonna make cloud gaming really take off. True, you can't use these as desktop GPUs, but they can be installed in data centers for purposes of video game streaming rather than AI.

Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

#142

Post by uejfiweun »

ViktorRay wrote: post #125

The Industrial Revolution led to a substantial decrease in agricultural jobs for humanity. But ultimately there were new jobs created. This happens with every technological innovation. It’s called creative destruction. The idea that some technology will lead to mass unemployment and then some kind of revolution…that is a myth that’s been around since Marx. Actually even before him. I predict the same thing will happe…

Unfortunately, we don't experience creative destruction in abstract terms like reading about it in a history textbook. Most people are really just focused on their own lives. Losing their job AND the economic value of their skills is nothing short of a disaster. I don't think telling them "relax, eventually you'll be able to switch over to entirely new categories of employment!" is really going to strike the chord you're looking for.

Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

#143

Post by uejfiweun »

guluarte wrote: post #111

I don't know if anyone else feels the same but for me, the more productive LLMs become, the more work I have.

Yeah, absolutely. I feel like we've replaced "deep work" with constant context switching, breakages, and friction. I got into this line of work in order to go deep and build cool stuff, but now the vast majority of my day-to-day is spent fighting against interfaces. Couple this with unreasonable expectations from the man and yeah, my dev job is leaving me more exhausted than ever.

Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

#144

Post by 4ff »

ryandrake wrote: post #83
ravenstine wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have no reason to care in globalized cultures that are morally bankrupt and have no sense of citizenry to feel any amount of allegiance to. Business leaders were never perfect, but things are at least different when you have a sense that when you treat your employees and customers unfairly that you are treating your extended friends and family unfairly. The atomization of everything means that sense that your bu…

These businesses don't see themselves as corporeal parts of the world or as part of their physical, local community. They see themselves as intangible entities - bytes in the ether, spreadsheets, lacking physical substance or matter, immaterial ghosts owned by shareholders. Every other physical thing in the world, living or not, that is not a shareholder's wallet, is a resource to be used, exploited, mined, and disca…

Actually the ideal company is one that is a literal money machine - aka just creates money without liabilities - enabling shareholders to lay claim on the cash.

Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

#145

Post by crystal_revenge »

tunesmith wrote: post #91
crystal_revenge wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "But only help, they can't come up with the idea." "Sure they can, we can just ask them." I've had multiple instances now where AI left to it's own devices has solved a tricky problem that I honestly didn't think it was capable of. I routinely have them design their own experiment loops, learn from each round and iterate on the process. Multiple times it has lead to a needle moving change with no need for human int…

> I've had multiple instances now where AI left to it's own devices has solved a tricky problem that I honestly didn't think it was capable of. Who cares that you've had multiple instances? Everyone has had multiple instances. The question is whether that happens in EVERY instance. Because when someone's laid off, that's what the exec believes, that the person isn't needed at all. I'm not arguing that AI won't replac…

I'm not sure I follow your logic: if everyone has "multiple instances" of being able to fully automate part of there job, than the number of people in that role can be reduced in proportion to the amount of work automated.

Further, to your original point, because these human bottle necks exist and are not parallelizable that means you cannot choose to increase your productivity (since the bottle neck will slow things down regardless) but lower your costs.

AI allows less people to do the same amount of work, and based on your claims, you can't necessary scale up more work to those same people. How do you determine that this will incorrectly lead to a reduction in the workforce?

Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

#146

Post by senectus1 »

tunesmith wrote: post #30

Unfortunately it will take longer for our bosses to walk it back. I feel like I'm fighting the battle daily, telling execs what kind of work LLMs do not replace... it's very slippery, they keep on doing the rhetorical texas two-step - I don't think they even realize they're doing it. We communicate that LLM is amplifying, they hear it can replace. "No, we need humans to help with specs" "But AI can help with that." "…

>"Sure they can, we can just ask them."

I'm convinced this is in large part because of the anthropomorphism of AI.

AI is not people, the moment you start treating it as people you start believing and thinking of it as people and you now take the human safety check out of the loop.

If you take the human out of the loop you have an unsecured weapon/dangerous object on the loose. anything from excel spreadsheets through to actual weapons. it all needs a human in the loop.

Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

#147

Post by crystal_revenge »

smallnix wrote: post #72
crystal_revenge wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "But only help, they can't come up with the idea." "Sure they can, we can just ask them." I've had multiple instances now where AI left to it's own devices has solved a tricky problem that I honestly didn't think it was capable of. I routinely have them design their own experiment loops, learn from each round and iterate on the process. Multiple times it has lead to a needle moving change with no need for human int…

> I routinely have them design their own experiment loops, Exactly, so that's the person required in the dev loop. You directed it, a person.

We're talking 15 minutes of work versus easily 15 days of work. I'm not sure I see the gotcha here?

Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

#148

Post by Larrikin »

andy99 wrote: post #62
datakan wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It tells you a lot about your execs and how little they care, either for their employees or their customers. The quarterly profits are their God and they will worship at the altar of the stock price. Instead of finding ways to make AI enhance their employees and make them more productive, they immediately jump to ways to eliminate employees. It's the opposite of a growth mentallity. I'd love for these executives to s…

I've never seen a company punished for doing the right thing, caring for humans and providing a good work environment. We’ll see how this goes over but I disagree. You don’t have to look hard in tech, especially a few years ago, to find groups of coddled “workers”, doing very little or at least doing what they want instead of what a business and customers want. This paradoxically ended up creating toxic work environm…

Can you provide concrete examples?

Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

#149

Post by zymhan »

Animats wrote: post #127
aresant wrote: post #66

This is an absolutely classic PR "submarine" effort to reframe the impact of AI Paul Graham has mandatory essay on this - https://www.paulgraham.com/submarine.html (1) More than 50% of Americans at this point are more concerned about AI than excited for it - https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/03/12/key-findi... (2) Popular media is feeding into this zeitgeist with headlines like - "Prepare for an AI jobs ap…

Right, as noted above, last week The Economist finally said it's real. That's a reversal from their previous position. The Economist likes to look at actuals, which always trail real time, rather than projections. Now they can see it happening in past data. AI deployment is going much faster than previous industrial revolutions, such as railroads and tractors and even computers. When these things take a generation, t…

> There is no evidence yet in the labour-market data of AI destroying many jobs.

Literally from the article https://www.economist.com/leaders/2026/05/14/prepare-for-an-...

Re: Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back AI jobs apocalypse predictions

#150

Post by windexh8er »

simonw wrote: post #104
windexh8er wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For those that write and shill for these orgs, almost full time, I could see how this type of admission is damning.

I don't understand what you're saying here. (Personally I would love to see Sam and Dario credibly walk back their jobs doomerism talk, but I don't think the facts match the headline in this case.)

But you also don't know. So, it seems like a contradiction.

Also, for fun, I asked Opus 4.8 to confirm or deny this... Full text:

""" Confirmed. The quote is accurate. Altman said it on May 26, 2026, during a virtual interview at a Commonwealth Bank of Australia (CBA) technology conference in Sydney, in conversation with CBA CEO Matt Comyn. He was speaking remotely to the conference about AI's impact on jobs. (International Business Times) The fuller context: Altman was walking back his own earlier predictions about AI-driven job loss. He framed the remark by saying he was "delighted to be wrong about this," then added that he thought there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than has actually happened. (eWEEK) He continued: "I now think I understand more about why it hasn't, and I'm obviously grateful, but that is an area where my intuitions were just off." (Time) His explanation for the miss centered on human interaction. He argued that human interaction remains an irreplaceable component of many jobs and that even as AI handles routine tasks, there is a "human part" of employment that can't be substituted. (International Business Times) He mentioned that after trying to delegate his own Slack and email responses to AI and then returning to doing them manually, he concluded "we really do care about our interactions with people." (Breitbart) A few contextual points worth flagging: The reversal is notable because Altman had said the opposite roughly a year earlier. On the Uncapped podcast with his brother Jack in June 2025, he had predicted many jobs would disappear due to AI, though he expected new opportunities to emerge. (Breitbart) The remark functions partly as a contrast with rivals. It lands as an implicit rebuke of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who has warned that AI could eliminate up to 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years and push unemployment to 10–20%. (OfficeChai) Some coverage notes the timing. Several outlets point out the softened messaging comes as both OpenAI and Anthropic reportedly prepare for IPOs, each at valuations around $1 trillion (Breitbart) — which is context certain reporters are offering as possible motivation, not something Altman himself stated. It's also worth a caveat on sourcing: the quote itself is consistent across many outlets (Time, Reuters via Fast Company, IBTimes, eWeek), so I'm confident in its accuracy and attribution. Some of the surrounding framing (the IPO angle, the Amodei "rebuke" characterization) reflects editorial interpretation rather than Altman's words. """

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