San Francisco, CA – OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has admitted that he was too optimistic about how quickly artificial intelligence would disrupt businesses and transform the economy. In a recent interview with podcaster David Senra, Altman reflected on his earlier predictions and acknowledged that he underestimated the “inertia” within the economy. He explained that people and businesses are slower to adapt to new technology than he anticipated, even as AI itself has advanced at a remarkable pace.
Altman said he initially expected the impact of AI to become much more visible soon after the launch of GPT-4 in 2023. He thought software companies would face major disruption almost immediately, with businesses and products becoming easier to replace. “I thought when we got to GPT-4, which was back in 2023, that very quickly after that there was going to be much more disruption, software businesses up for grabs right away, than it turned out to be,” he said. According to Altman, the technology itself was not necessarily the problem—the economy simply takes time to change.
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“I think I was wrong about a few things, but one in terms of the speed: the economy just has so much inertia,” Altman said. He explained that people tend to keep using the same products, buying from the same companies, and following familiar ways of working, even when new technology becomes available. This slower pace of change, Altman believes, could actually be a good thing. A gradual transition gives businesses and society more time to understand how AI fits into everyday work, instead of forcing everything to change at once. “But it means we’ve all been too ambitious on timelines. Even with this incredible technology, society and the economy will adapt more slowly,” he said. The gap between how quickly technology improves and how quickly society adapts could shape the next phase of the AI boom.
