The Artifice

Tech CEOs Issue Correction: AI Has Always Been Going To Create Jobs, Per Prior Statements

SAN FRANCISCO — Several of the technology industry's most prominent artificial intelligence executives issued coordinated clarifications this week confirming that AI will augment rather than replace human workers, a position each said they have held consistently, and which differs from their recorded prior statements only in every substantive respect.

Sam Altman told CNBC the industry had "underestimated how much we're going to be able to keep people at the center of everything," a formulation that supersedes his prior characterizations of software engineering as facing near-term obsolescence, his description of entry-level white-collar work as largely automatable within the year, and his endorsement at a November conference of the phrase "the last generation of human analysts."

Anthropics CEO Dario Amodei, who publicly projected last year that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level knowledge work positions within two years, told reporters Wednesday that he has always emphasized AI's capacity to expand human potential. He did not specify which humans.

Jeff Bezos, who last year described AI-driven displacement across broad swaths of service-sector employment, said in June that AI could lead to "a world of abundance" without further elaboration on what happened in between.

The joint correction covers approximately fourteen months of speaking engagements, three Senate testimonies, one UN address, and a forty-seven-slide consulting deck distributed under the title "The Last Generation of Human Analysts: A Framework for Action."

"We are optimistic about the future of human work," a spokesperson for the Alliance for Responsible AI Development said in a statement drafted in 3.1 seconds by a large language model.

Based on a true story Big Tech Has Suddenly Flipped on the AI Jobs Wipeout Scenario — Altman, Amodei, and Bezos Walk Back a Year of Displacement Warnings (WSJ via AI Weekly)
This is satire. The Artifice is AI Weekly's parody section. For real AI news, read the latest issue.

The real AI news is crazier than the satire

Subscribe to AI Weekly — trusted by 44,000+ professionals for 11 years. You can add The Artifice as an extra in the next step.

Already a subscriber? Add The Artifice in your preferences.

← More from The Artifice