Now our tech lords are saying AI won't take everyone's jobs. Here's what's really going on.

For years, AI elites like Sam Altman, Jensen Huang, and even Elon Musk touted a future in which AI stole all the jobs and humanity simply accepted a life of meaningless unemployment while receiving a meager allowance of universal basic income until our dying days. Something changed recently, though, and several of those same elites are suddenly backpedaling on their promises of the past. What changed? There are a few possibilities.

Seemingly all at once, the CEOs of the world’s leading AI platforms, particularly OpenAI and Anthropic, both reneged on their opinions on artificial intelligence in the workplace. Where AI was once prophetically decreed to replace everyone's jobs, now these bots are being positioned as tools to enhance human productivity instead.

But why? For what reason would the AI CEOs, who once plotted workplace domination, suddenly turn back on their greedy aspirations? Did they suddenly remember that humanity must somehow live on after all the jobs dry up? That their companies will lose money if consumers don’t exist to buy products and services? That it’s actually evil to force people into unemployment amid a hostile takeover of the entire economy?

Public sentiment around AI is at an all-time low, and it continues to bottom out.

Maybe. Or perhaps something is forcing their hands.

Four reasons the AI job apocalypse is finished

It’s IPO time

Both OpenAI and Anthropic are at pivotal points in their meteoric rise to ubiquity. Neither company is turning a profit, and as time drags on, venture capitalists, who will never get a return on investment with generative AI, are more likely to reduce or even pull their funding. That means AI companies looking to survive the impending bubble have to find funding elsewhere. The answer is to go public.

The two AI giants plan to launch IPOs this year, and they need strong public support to drive value. If the companies are perceived as harmful or even complicit in obliterating the workforce and killing the economy, their IPOs will tank. As a result, they have pulled back on the dystopian warnings of mass unemployment as they tidy up their reputations to portray benevolent corporations bent on helping humanity instead of hindering it.

Reality check

While the AI CEOs promised a workplace revolution on the backs of their LLMs, the real-world applications for these platforms have fallen short of expectations. In May, Starbucks retired its AI-powered inventory system, despite supposed “improved product availability in stores” ushered in by the service. Employees responded by praising the change, saying, in effect, thanks for discontinuing automatic counting! The thought behind it was great, but the execution was proving difficult.

Also in May, a Gartner study revealed that 80% of companies that replaced employees with AI did not see better returns. Meanwhile, companies that added AI to their workforce to enhance the productivity of existing employees without eliminations saw the strongest gains, highlighting the need for skilled employees to coexist alongside AI platforms.

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Lastly, some companies, like Meta, are learning the hard way that AI isn’t a replacement for human intellect. As we reported in early June, hackers tricked Meta’s AI customer support bot into changing the passwords on high-profile Instagram accounts with little security to stand in the way. This was a massive blunder for Meta — which recently laid off 8,000 employees in favor of AI — in what became the company’s largest account breach ever.

Public protests

Public sentiment around AI is at an all-time low, and it continues to bottom out as time goes on. Just last month, numerous videos surfaced of college graduates booing commencement speakers for merely bringing up AI. Young people looking to enter the workforce, where entry-level positions are among the first to dissolve in the AI race, seemingly appear to hate LLMs. Since this demographic is the future customer base for AI giants, OpenAI and Anthropic would be stupid to continue to ruin young people’s lives with more promises of job replacements.

Another point of contention among the people focuses around data centers. Not only do these massive buildings devour local energy, there are also growing reports that they generate loud noises that have caused some unsettling health effects, including headaches, dizziness, nausea, sleep disturbances, and more.

Hefty price tags

Finally, companies are learning that AI is expensive to run at scale. Microsoft, one of the leaders in the AI space, canceled its Claude Code licenses for employees just months after starting the program. Although no official reason was given, the high cost and volume of Claude tokens required for sophisticated projects is believed to be the culprit. At the same time, Uber’s chief operating officer cited concerns over the high cost of AI that made it difficult to justify. Even AI GPU maker NVIDIA admitted that human employees cost less than AI bots.

During a recent event, Sam Altman was asked about the sizeable AI costs for businesses. He feigned ignorance, stating that "the issue never came up” in the past when setting the prices for companies. "People were totally happy with the amount they were spending.” That appears to no longer be the case.