As main employers have slashed jobs during the last 12 months, a lot of them have cited artificial intelligence or automation to justify the cuts. AI was referenced in almost 55,000 layoffs in 2025, in keeping with outplacement agency Challenger, Grey & Christmas—and the newest figures counsel that development is continuous into this 12 months alongside a record-high surge in job cuts, which crossed 108,000 in January alone.
However economists and consultants have repeatedly said that employment information doesn’t point out AI is changing jobs en masse in the intervening time. And it appears even OpenAI CEO Sam Altman shares this skepticism over whether or not AI is definitely chargeable for the layoffs roiling the workforce.
“I don’t know what the precise proportion is, however there’s some AI washing the place individuals are blaming AI for layoffs that they’d in any other case do, after which there’s some actual displacement by AI of various sorts of jobs,” Altman stated in an interview in the course of the AI Affect Summit in New Delhi this week. “I anticipate we’ll see extra of the latter over time.”
There are many potential explanations for ongoing layoffs, from immigration coverage to broader financial uncertainty, however enterprise leaders have been fast to quote AI. Corporations like Citigroup have claimed AI will “reshape how work will get executed” and have alerted workers to extra layoffs within the coming months. UPS has minimize tens of hundreds of jobs during the last 12 months, and CEO Carol Tomé claimed automation is a core a part of the enterprise changing into extra environment friendly. Tech corporations like Amazon and Microsoft have declared AI will revolutionize how they work, all of the whereas trimming headcount below the guise of changing into leaner.
Regardless of what enterprise leaders say concerning the promise of AI, nonetheless, research shows that the labor market has not but seen a dip in employment throughout the roles which are probably to be disrupted. Unemployment figures additionally don’t point out that employees are being changed by AI in vital numbers simply but.
Altman famous, as many consultants have, that AI would possible disrupt extra jobs over time. “After all we’ll discover new sorts of jobs, as we do with each tech revolution,” he informed CNBC’s India affiliate, TV18. Altman added that the affect of AI might be “palpable” within the coming years.
Some AI leaders have been extra forceful than Altman: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said AI may remove half of all entry-level white-collar jobs as quickly as 5 years from now. It’s true that AI adoption is beginning to have an effect on extra junior roles, significantly within the spheres of tech and finance. Early-career employees in sectors like software program engineering and customer support have, in truth, seen a 13% decline in employment since 2022, and unemployment amongst current school graduates is on the rise. And whereas it’s tougher to quantify how AI is altering the character of labor, it’s clear that the know-how is reworking how folks do their jobs, significantly throughout HR and software program engineering.
However Altman argues it’s not simply entry stage jobs or engineering roles that may be on the chopping block quickly.
Altman went as far as to say that CEOs may finally lose jobs to AI, too—together with himself—if superintelligence turns into a actuality and AI can carry out at a stage that outpaces people.
“AI superintelligence sooner or later on its growth curve can be able to doing a greater job being the CEO of a serious firm than any govt—definitely me,” he stated. In different phrases, the CEOs who’re at present utilizing AI as a rationale for layoffs would possibly discover themselves out of a job for that very cause within the not too distant future.
