Even the People Who Built AI Don't Think It's Coming for Your Staff

There's a version of the AI story that dominated the last two years: the robots are coming, white-collar jobs are evaporating, and anyone who doesn't automate immediately will be left behind with a skeleton crew and a lot of regret.

Sam Altman said it. Dario Amodei said it louder.

Now they're both walking it back.

The Reversal Worth Paying Attention To

Last week, Fortune reported that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told an audience he was "pretty wrong" about AI's impact on employment. A year ago, he was warning that entry-level white-collar roles were at serious risk. Now he says the displacement he predicted simply hasn't materialized.

His reason for updating his view? He tried delegating his own emails and Slack responses to AI, then went back to writing them himself. "We really do care about our interactions with people," he said. The human element wasn't something he could outsource, even with the most sophisticated tools on the planet at his disposal.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who once claimed AI could eliminate 50% of white-collar jobs, has reframed his view entirely. His new take: automate 90% of a task, and people don't disappear, they expand into the remaining 10% until it becomes 100% of what they do, at 10x the productivity. Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon, who never held the apocalyptic position to begin with, pointed to a century of American economic history: electrification, computing, the internet. Employment grew through all of it.

These aren't fringe voices hedging. These are the people who built the technology.

Why This Matters for Associations and MLSs

I've written before about why I think AI will make local knowledge more valuable, not less. The argument these CEOs are now making publicly is the same one I've been making about our industry specifically.

AI raises the floor. It doesn't eliminate the ceiling.

When tools become cheaper and more accessible, the thing that becomes scarce isn't the tool, it's the judgment about how to use it. When everyone has access to the same market data, the same comps, the same AI-generated disclosures, the differentiation moves back to the person interpreting all of it. The 30-year agent who knows why one side of a street sells for 8% more. The association staff member who understands why a new form change will create confusion in your specific market. The MLS team that can tell members what the data is missing, not just what it shows.

That's not a job AI replaces. It's a job AI makes more visible.

The Jevons Paradox, Applied

There's an economic concept showing up in a lot of these conversations right now: Jevons paradox. When the Watt steam engine made burning coal more efficient, people didn't burn less coal; coal became cheaper, more useful, more widely adopted, and consumption went up.

The same dynamic appears to be playing out with knowledge work. Call center employment is holding steady or growing despite AI adoption. Radiologists haven't been replaced by imaging algorithms. The productivity gain doesn't reduce demand for the role; it lowers the cost per interaction, which creates more interactions, more channels, more markets worth serving.

For associations and MLSs, this is the frame worth keeping. AI won't shrink the scope of what your staff does. It will change what they spend their time on. The question isn't "how many people do we need?" It's "what does higher-value work look like for each of them now?"

The Practical Takeaway

The organizations that will come out ahead in this environment aren't the ones that cut staff because AI made certain tasks faster. They're the ones that redeployed that capacity toward things that require human judgment, local knowledge, and relationship depth. All things AI can observe but not replicate.

Sam Altman couldn't outsource his own emails. Your members can't outsource the trust a client puts in them. Your staff can't outsource the institutional knowledge that makes your market guidance worth something.

That's the argument. And now the people who built these tools are making it too.

Recommended Reading:

"Sam Altman and Dario Amodei are both walking back their AI jobs apocalypse prophecies" — Fortune (May 2026)

"Why AI Will Make Local Knowledge More Valuable, Not Less" — Meagan Zeman (May 2026)