OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has signaled a shift in his thinking on AI-driven job disruption, saying there are areas of work that humans will still want to perform, even as AI becomes more capable.
The comments, delivered during a conversation with Commonwealth Bank (CommBank) CEO Matt Comyn at the firm’s Accelerate AI event in Sydney, add nuance to earlier warnings from Altman that entry-level white-collar roles would be among the first to be heavily affected by GenAI replacing human work.
Speaking via video link, Altman acknowledged that some of his earlier predictions about near-term labor disruption had not materialized as expected.
“My scorecard, at the highest level, would be we've been roughly right on technological predictions and pretty wrong on the social and economic implications,” he said.
“I’m delighted to be wrong about that.”
That acknowledgement is notable for the customer experience sector, as AI-driven automation has become central to transformation strategies across contact centers, service operations and digital support channels.
Altman had previously pointed to customer support as one of the earliest sectors to be affected by large-scale job losses because of the structured and repeatable nature of many service interactions, stating that human jobs would be “totally, totally gone.”
GenAI tools are already handling growing volumes of chat, email and voice support for enterprises. Yet Altman’s latest comments indicate that capability alone may not determine how far automation goes.
Altman Admits Human Interaction Still Matters
Altman said his own experiences using AI had reinforced the importance of human communication in certain contexts.
“We really do care about our interactions with people,” he said, explaining that while he experimented with AI systems managing emails and Slack messages, he found there were boundaries he was unwilling to cross. Personal communication, “which is a huge amount of my time, is not something that I can imagine myself outsourcing to an AI anytime soon."
Altman added that this realization has influenced how he thinks about the interaction between humans and AI as adoption increases.
The comments align with ongoing debates around where automation enhances service efficiency and where customers still expect human empathy and judgment.