Sam Altman has accused unnamed technology companies of hiding behind artificial intelligence to justify widespread job cuts, calling the practice “AI washing.”
The OpenAI chief executive made the remarks Thursday during an onstage interview at the India AI Impact summit hosted by CNBC-TV18. His comments arrive as layoffs ripple across the Bay Area’s largest employers. Google, Pinterest, Autodesk, and Meta have all filed workforce reduction notices in recent months, affecting hundreds of regional positions and thousands more statewide.
Altman drew a distinction between two separate phenomena. Some firms, he argued, invoke AI as a convenient excuse for layoffs they intended to make regardless. Others face genuine labor displacement as automated systems absorb work previously performed by people.
“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 said.
The CEO suggested the latter category will grow more common. He anticipates the technology’s impact on employment becoming “palpable” within the next few years. Meanwhile, Altman acknowledged the disruptive arc mirrors previous technological shifts. Last summer he predicted entire categories of work would vanish, replaced by newly created roles.
“We’ll find new kinds of jobs, as we do with every tech revolution,” he added.
That expectation underpins much of OpenAI’s commercial strategy. As a result, Altman appears to be positioning the company as both a driver of workforce upheaval and a source of the retraining and adaptation that follows. The question remains whether regulators and workers will accept that framing or demand more accountability from the tech sector.
