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.
Altman said those distinctions are becoming more important as businesses deploy AI agents into workplace systems and customer-facing operations.
“We care about people. We don’t care about machines that much.”
“We have expectations about what we do with a person. And right now…we have not yet figured out how we’re going to have a world where people and AI co-collaborate together,” Altman added.
Finding the Balance As AI-Native Systems Emerge
Despite rapid advances in model capability, Altman indicated enterprise adoption remains in its relatively early stages.
“We have these incredibly smart models [but] I think one has to look at the state of the economic adoption and say we’re still very early.”
That may resonate with many enterprises that are struggling to move AI pilots into measurable operational transformation as they face growing scrutiny over AI governance, disclosure and customer trust, particularly when deploying automated systems into sensitive service environments.
Altman indicated that while AI systems will become increasingly embedded into workflows, businesses are still determining the right balance between automation and human oversight.
“The thing that’s most on my mind is what it’s going to take to integrate this into people’s lives and into our companies, so that we get the acceleration we deserve and so that people can work on the things that people are uniquely good at and enjoy.”
Some of the tension comes from pushing AI agents through communication channels that were designed for humans, but this is likely to be resolved over the long term as new systems emerge, Altman noted.
“What I expect will happen is we will figure out new ways for agents to use our same services and interact with our same systems and data, but via a different channel.”
Altham suggested that AI interfaces could develop into proactive, always-on systems rather than tools that only respond when prompted.
“What I think will be possible soon is you will have an AI that is always running. It is understanding you and your goals and your company’s goals. And it’s just trying to be as helpful as it can given the amount of computing resources it has available.”
While AI continues changing customer operations, Altman’s latest remarks indicate the future of service work may prove more hybrid, and more human, than early predictions suggested.
