On the sidelines of the India AI Impact Summit 2026, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman delivered a candid yet reassuring message on the future of work. Addressing concerns about widespread job displacement due to AI, Altman acknowledged that disruption is bound to happen but he expresses deep confidence in humanity’s capacity to adapt and reinvent employment in more fulfilling directions.
Similar to some other tech leaders, Altman praised India’s extraordinary pace of AI adoption. He noted that India has emerged as one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing markets for OpenAI technologies, with ChatGPT now boasting over 100 million weekly active users in the country, with many of them being students and young professionals. He described India as “leading the way in embracing AI” and predicted it would become one of the technology’s most significant global markets in the years ahead.
AI will impact job market, says Altman
On the topic of job displacements due to AI, Altman was direct. “It (AI) will definitely impact the job market, but we always find new things to do, and I have no doubt we will find lots of better ones this time.”
He pointed to major historical precedents that had revolutionising effects on society – agricultural mechanisation, the Industrial Revolution, and the rise of computers. These were fields where automation eliminated certain roles but ultimately created entirely new categories of work that were previously unimaginable.
Altman argued that AI’s ability to automate routine, data-heavy, and repetitive tasks, across both blue-collar and white-collar domains, will free up human time and energy for higher-order creative, strategic, and interpersonal activities.
“AI makes products and services dramatically cheaper and accelerates economic growth,” he said, framing the technology as a net positive force that raises overall prosperity even as it reshapes the job landscape.
A generational opportunity for democratic AI
The OpenAI chief highlighted that each technological era builds a “higher scaffolding” for progress, with AI representing the current leap forward. “We have to make sure the next generation has the same opportunities we did,” said Altman with regard to the upcoming generations. Altman positioned the idea of democratic AI, i.e., AI that is open, accessible, and widely distributed, as the best path to inclusive prosperity, particularly in high-adoption countries like India.
OpenAI in increasingly expanding its collaborations with Indian firms to make its services more accessible to the masses, with the recent announcement of its partnership with JioHotstar to integrate ChatGPT-powered features.