For years they warned that AI would destroy white-collar work. In the same week in May 2026, both of them said they were wrong. Anthropic filed for its IPO five days later.
Sam Altman said in 2023 that AI would eliminate jobs. Full stop. No question about it.
Dario Amodei said AI would wipe out 50 percent of all white-collar jobs within five years. He called it a moral duty to be honest about what was coming.
Then in the same week in May 2026, both men said they were wrong. Altman said he was “delighted to be wrong.” Amodei said AI would actually expand work, not destroy it.
Five days later, Anthropic filed secret IPO papers with the government. OpenAI is doing the same. Both companies want to be valued at close to one trillion dollars each.
Here is the problem. A company asking investors for a trillion dollars cannot tell those same investors that its technology is going to wipe out half of all jobs. That is bad for business.
Meanwhile in the real world: more than 115,000 tech workers lost their jobs in the first five months of 2026. Amazon cut 30,000 people. Meta and Microsoft cut 20,000 in one day. Both companies said AI was the reason. Block cut 4,000 jobs — the biggest single AI layoff in history.
Altman said the apocalypse did not happen. He said this while the companies using his product were firing people and blaming AI.
One of these stories is true. The other one came out five days before the IPO.
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