ALTMAN SAYS HE WAS WRONG ABOUT AI DESTROYING JOBS AND AMODEI AGREES BUT 115000 TECH WORKERS LAID OFF THIS YEAR SAY OTHERWISE Two of the most influential people in artificial intelligence spent years warning the world that AI would eliminate white-collar jobs on a massive scale. This week both of them reversed. Sam Altman said he expected more impact on entry-level roles by now than has actually happened and admitted he was pretty wrong about the pace of displacement. Dario Amodei, who once put the figure at 50 percent of white-collar jobs eliminated within a few years, now says automation may actually expand the work people do. The timing is not accidental. Both companies are heading toward major financial events. Anthropic is preparing for a public offering at a valuation that recently touched $65 billion. OpenAI’s own IPO is under active discussion. Talking down AI job displacement is useful when you need regulators to stay calm and institutional investors to stay confident in your story. The data complicates their new optimism. Tech layoffs in 2026 have already passed 115,000 through May, on pace to exceed all of last year’s total of 124,000, with Meta, Amazon, and Snap among those explicitly crediting AI efficiency as the driver of cuts. The Yale Budget Lab has found no major statistical shifts yet in unemployment among high-AI-exposure occupations, but labor economists note those numbers typically lag reality by six months or more. Chris Olah of Anthropic, speaking at the Vatican alongside Pope Leo XIV earlier this month, told the gathering there was a real possibility AI will displace human labor at a very large scale and that supporting those displaced would be a moral imperative of historic proportions. Keywords: Sam Altman AI jobs, Dario Amodei AI layoffs, AI job displacement 2026, tech layoffs