Sam Altman calls out ‘AI washing,’ alleging firms falsely blame layoffs on artificial intelligence

(SeaPRwire) –   Amid ongoing discussions about artificial intelligence’s actual impact on employment, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has stated that some companies are engaging in “AI washing,” which involves falsely attributing workforce reductions to the technology’s influence.

“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 shared with CNBC-TV18 during the India AI Impact Summit in February.

The concept of AI washing has gained prominence as emerging data regarding the tech’s effect on the labor market presents a mixed and inconclusive picture of whether the technology is eliminating human jobs or has yet to significantly impact them.

For instance, a study released in February by the National Bureau of Economic Research indicated that nearly 90% of C-suite executives surveyed across the U.S., U.K., Germany, and Australia reported that AI had no effect on workplace employment in the three years following ChatGPT’s late-2022 release.

Conversely, prominent tech leaders such as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have cautioned about a significant impact on white-collar jobs, suggesting AI could eliminate 50% of entry-level office positions. Other executives, like Snap CEO Evan Spiegel, have already cited AI when implementing workforce reductions, announcing in April that the company would lay off approximately 1,000 employees, or about 16% of its workforce. According to the 2025 World Economic Forum Future of Jobs Report, around 40% of employers anticipate following Spiegel’s lead in reducing staff due to AI.

Altman further clarified that he anticipates increased job displacement as a result of AI, alongside the creation of new roles that complement the technology.

“We’ll find new kinds of jobs, as we do with every tech revolution,” he stated. “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 that the widespread worker displacement envisioned by Altman and Amodei is not a certainty and has not yet materialized. Utilizing data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Current Population Survey, the research found no significant differences in the rate of change for occupational mix or the duration of unemployment for individuals in jobs with high AI exposure from ChatGPT’s release through March 2026. The figures indicated no substantial AI-related labor shifts at this point.

“No matter which way you look at the data, at this exact moment, it just doesn’t seem like there’s major macroeconomic effects here,” Martha Gimbel, executive director and cofounder of the Yale Budget Lab, recently commented.

Gimbel attributed the practice of AI washing to companies misrepresenting diminished margins and revenue, stemming from their inability to effectively navigate cautious consumers and geopolitical tensions, as being caused by AI. David Stout, cofounder and CEO of WebAI, also noted in a commentary piece that tech founders are facing increased pressure to justify substantial and ongoing investments in AI, which is prompting many to create narratives about AI disrupting labor and the economy through predictions of mass worker displacement.

This period of anticipation for AI’s effects to take hold is comparable to the IT boom of the 1980s, according to Torsten Slok, chief economist at Apollo Global Management. Nearly 40 years ago, economist and Nobel laureate Robert Solow observed minimal productivity gains during the PC era, despite predictions of a surge, and Slok sees a similar pattern emerging today.

“AI is everywhere except in the incoming macroeconomic data,” he wrote in a blog post.

Is there evidence of AI’s impact on jobs?

Slok also suggested that this current lull in AI-driven economic impact might follow a J-curve pattern, characterized by an initial slowdown in performance obscured by early, extensive spending, preceding an exponential surge in productivity and labor changes.

Erik Brynjolfsson, an economist and director of Stanford University’s Digital Economy Lab, indicated in a Financial Times op-ed that recent labor data might be revealing a new narrative where AI is indeed influencing productivity and jobs. He pointed to a decoupling of job growth and GDP growth reflected in the latest revised job numbers: last week’s jobs report revised down job gains to just 181,000, despite fourth-quarter GDP tracking up 3.7%. Brynjolfsson’s own analysis showed a 2.7% year-over-year productivity increase last year, which he attributed to the emerging productivity benefits of AI.

Brynjolfsson published a significant study last year demonstrating a 13% relative decline in employment for early-career employees in jobs with high AI exposure. In contrast, most experienced workers saw stable or growing employment levels.

“The updated 2025 U.S. data suggests we are now transitioning out of this investment phase into a harvest phase,” he wrote in the *FT*, “where those earlier efforts begin to manifest as measurable output.”

A version of this story was originally published on .com on February 19, 2026.

More on AI and jobs:

• A 160-year-old paradox explains why AI will create more lawyers and accountants—not fewer, top economist says
• Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says AI won’t kill entry-level jobs. He’s hiring 1,000 new grads to prove it
• AI is cutting 16,000 U.S. jobs a month—and Gen Z is taking the brunt, Goldman Sachs says