Sam Altman says the quiet part is loud, confirming that some companies are blaming unrelated layoffs on technology as ‘AI washing’

As debate continues about AI’s true impact on the workforce, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said some companies are engaging in “AI washing” when it comes to layoffs, or wrongly attributing workforce cuts to the impact of technology.

“I don’t know what the exact percentage is, but there is some AI washing where people are blaming AI for leaving jobs that they would otherwise do, and then there is actual displacement of different types of jobs by AI,” Altman told CNBC-TV18 at the India AI Impact Summit on Thursday.

Emerging data on technology’s impact on the labor market tell a muddled, inconclusive story about how technology destroys or destroys human jobs — or whether it doesn’t touch them.

For example, a study published this month by the National Bureau of Economic Research found that nearly 90% of thousands of C-suite executives surveyed across the US, UK, Germany and Australia said AI had had no impact on workplace employment in the past three years since ChatGPT’s late-2022 release.

However, prominent tech leaders like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have warned that AI’s white-collar bloodbath could potentially wipe out 50% of entry-level office jobs. Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski suggested this week that the 3,000-person workforce will be cut by a third by 2030 due to the acceleration of AI. About 40% of employees expect to follow Siemiatkowski’s lead in downsizing as a result of AI, according to the 2025 World Economic Forum Future of Jobs report.

Altman made it clear that he expects more job displacement as a result of AI, as well as the emergence of new roles that complement the technology.

“We will find new kinds of jobs, as we do with every technological revolution,” he said. “But I expect that the real impact of AI will start to become apparent in the next few years.”

Data from a recent Yale Budget Lab report suggests that Altman and Amodei’s view of massive job displacement from AI isn’t certain and isn’t here yet. Using data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Survey, the research found no significant difference in the occupational mix or length of unemployment rates of people with jobs with high exposure to AI from the release of ChatGPT through November 2025. The numbers suggested that there were no significant AI-related labor changes among these AI-related labor changes.

“Any way you look at the data, at this exact moment, it doesn’t seem like there are big macroeconomic implications here,” said Martha Gimbel, executive director and cofounder of the Yale Budget Lab. fate earlier this month.