Sam Altman says the quiet part out loud, confirming some companies are ‘AI washing’ by blaming unrelated layoffs on the technology

As debate continues over AI’s true impact on the labor force, Open AI CEO Sam Altman said some companies are engaging in “AI washing” when it comes to layoffs, or falsely attributing workforce reductions to the technology’s impact. “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 told CNBC-TV18 at the India AI Impact Summit in February. AI washing has gained traction as emerging data about the tech’s impact on the labor market tells a muddied, inconclusive story about how the technology is destroying human jobs—or if it has yet to touch them. A study published in February by the National Bureau of Economic Research, for example, found that of thousands of surveyed C-suite executives across the U.S., the U.K., Germany, and Australia, nearly 90% said AI had no impact on workplace employment over the past three years following the late-2022 release of ChatGPT. However, prominent tech leaders like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have warned of a white-collar bloodbath, with AI potentially wiping out 50% of entry-level office jobs. Others like Snap CEO Evan Spiegel have already made workforce reductions citing AI, announcing in April the company would lay off about 1,000 staff members, or about 16% of its workforce. Around 40% of employers expect to follow Spiegel’s lead in culling staff down the line as a result of AI, according to the 2025 World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report. Altman clarified he anticipates more job displacement as a result of AI, as well as the emergence of new roles complementing the technology. “We’ll find new kinds of jobs, as we do with every tech revolution,” he said. “But I would expect that the real impact of AI doing jobs in the next few years will begin to be palpable.” What are the signs of AI washing? Data from a recent Yale Budget Lab report suggests Altman and