At the AI Impact Summit in India, Sam Altman, founder and CEO of OpenAI, said that he suspected that many companies were using the name of "artificial intelligence" to find a shield for planned layoffs and to pass on the responsibilities that should be borne by their own business decisions to new technologies. In an interview with CNBC-TV18, Altman said that companies are now using AI as a "scapegoat", which is not exactly the same as the real job replacement brought about by AI.
Altman said: "I don't know the exact proportion, but there is indeed a certain degree of 'AI reshuffle' - some companies blame AI for the layoffs that would have been carried out, and there are indeed real replacements of certain positions by AI." For him, this is a delicate balance: On the one hand, he needs companies to believe that OpenAI's technology can replace some human labor, so they are willing to continue to invest in AI On the other hand, he does not want his product to be simply labeled as a "job killer" so as not to further stimulate public sentiment that is already highly sensitive to unemployment issues. “As with every technological revolution, we will find new forms of work,” Altman added, “but in the coming years, the impact of AI on all types of work will become tangible.”
Judging from the available data, Ultraman's judgment is not groundless. According to data from the consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, about 55,000 job losses in 2025 will be directly attributed to AI. This number is certainly not small, but it accounts for less than 1% of all job losses that year. In addition, a recent paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) showed that 90% of executives surveyed said that AI had “no impact” on employment within their companies in the past three years. In other words, at least from a statistical perspective, the number of layoffs directly caused by AI is still in the minority, which is far from enough to support the narrative that "AI is systematically destroying employment."
However, at the level of public opinion and corporate rhetoric, the statement "AI leads to layoffs" appears frequently. The article mentioned that Amazon is a typical example: when the company laid off 14,000 people this spring, it told employees that with the implementation of AI, the company "will need fewer people in certain positions." However, in October, Amazon changed its tune and said that AI was not the real reason for the layoffs. This inconsistent statement is interpreted as the company externally creating an image of "adjusting its organizational structure due to innovation" while internally conducting routine cost reductions and personnel reductions on the grounds of technological progress.
There's no denying that people are losing their jobs. The overall performance of the job market is weak. Some analysts believe that the current employment situation is "barely supportive", while others use the term "spin" to describe the downward trend in some fields. However, so far, the main driving factors seem to be multiple factors such as the macroeconomic environment and policy changes, rather than a single AI technology itself. In this context, Altman proposed the term "AI shuffle", which is not only a reminder of corporate behavior that exaggerates the negative impact of AI, but also reflects the thin line that AI companies are trying to find between business narrative and social responsibility.