• Copy link Facebook X Whatsapp Reddit Pinterest Flipboard Email Get Tom’s Hardware’s best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox. • You are now subscribed Your newsletter sign-up was successful Artificial intelligence is already proving to be a disruption to the workplace, with the scope depending on your industry, but OpenAI CEO Sam Altman believes that some of the damage isn’t entirely the fault of AI firms. • He raised his belief that so-called “AI washing,” where AI is being falsely blamed for layoffs in some businesses, is being used as an excuse to reduce headcounts. • Photonics and high-speed data movement is the next big AI bottleneck The data center cooling state of play Massive AI data center buildouts are squeezing energy supplies Ultra Ethernet: The data center interconnection of tomorrow In an interview with CNBC at the India AI Impact Summit this week (h/tFortune), Altman explained that “I don’t know what the exact percentage is, but there’s some AI washing where people are blaming AI for layoffs that they would otherwise do, and then there’s some real displacement by AI of different kinds of jobs.” Altman isn’t oblivious to the impact that AI is having, however, but (as you might expect) he’s a little more optimistic about the end result. • “We’ll find new kinds of jobs, as we do with every tech revolution,” Altman went on to say, believing that “[he] would expect that the real impact of AI doing jobs in the next few years will begin to be palpable.” His comments follow arecent National Bureau of Economic Research surveyof executives that showed that, far from being ready to boost productivity for businesses, 80% of the executives queried found that AI wasn’t having any impact on productivity or, indeed, on employment numbers. • That’s despite the warning calls from others in the AI space, including fromMicrosoftAI boss Mustafa Suleyman, who believesAI will be ready to replace white-collar jobswithin 18 months.

Article Summaries:

  • OpenAI CEO Sam Altman warned that many companies are using “AI washing” to justify layoffs, blaming artificial intelligence for job cuts that would occur anyway. Speaking at the India AI Impact Summit, Altman noted that while some displacement by AI is real, a significant portion of layoffs are being attributed to AI as a convenient excuse. He cited a National Bureau of Economic Research survey showing 80 % of executives report no productivity or employment gains from AI, and a Yale Budget Lab study finding no major shift in job churn since ChatGPT’s release. Altman remains cautiously optimistic that new roles will emerge, but he cautions that job disruption will become “palpable” in the coming years.

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