Earlier this year, he got more specific on what labor. \u201cWhite-collar work, where you\u2019re sitting down at a computer, either being a lawyer or an accountant or a project manager or a marketing person, most of those tasks will be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months,\u201d he said in an interview with the Financial Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n But well before we reached the full automation timeline, Suleyman started walking back his position. \u201cI said \u2018tasks,’\u201d Suleyman told The Verge earlier this month<\/a>. \u201cSo that does not mean jobs\u2026 Jobs and roles are the broader category, and tasks are the components of that.\u201d Instead, he now believes AI will make the tedium of work easier. \u201cSending an email, having a conversation with a colleague, putting together a PowerPoint \u2014 sub-tasks will increasingly become digitized, automated, and we can basically generate more and more of them. That does not necessarily mean that the role goes away at all,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n Now, let\u2019s set aside the fact that in Suleyman\u2019s dream future, workers will be having more meetings and letting their AI equivalent chat with their colleagues\u2014a nightmare for people who are actually doing that work. The general thrust of the messaging is now \u201cYou\u2019re not being replaced, you\u2019re being augmented.\u201d<\/p>\n He\u2019s far from the only one who has changed his tune in this way. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has also been shifting the narrative that he spins. In 2025, the head of the world\u2019s biggest chipmaker said programming AI is basically like \u201cprogramming a person,\u201d which is definitely how people like to be talked about.<\/p>\n \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cAgency. Ambition. Dignity. All fulfilled through work and technology that gives us purpose.\u201d- Brad Smith, President of Microsoft, like 5 minutes ago <\/p>\n To that end, it seemed Huang saw the goal of AI to fundamentally replace an entire class of workers with AI models capable of doing what they do. At the time, Huang said<\/a>, \u201cIt is our job to create computing technology such that nobody has to program. And that the programming language is human, everybody in the world is now a programmer. This is the miracle of artificial intelligence.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, Huang is warning against anyone suggesting that a particular type of career will ever go away.\u00a0\u201cThis is one of the concerns that I have about the doomers describing the end of work and killing of jobs. If we discourage people from being software engineers, we\u2019re going to run out of software engineers,\u201d he said during an appearance on the Dwarkesh Podcast<\/a>. He even pointed to an example of where this type of thinking has done real damage: \u201cThe same prediction happened ten years ago. Some of the doomers were telling people, \u2018Whatever you do, don\u2019t be a radiologist.\u2019 You might hear some of those videos still on the web saying radiology is going to be the first career to go and the world is not going to need any more radiologists. Guess what we\u2019re short of? Radiologists.\u201d<\/p>\n Huang almost certainly wouldn\u2019t call himself a doomer, but what he was saying in 2025 doesn\u2019t feel fundamentally different than what he\u2019s warning against now. It seems, if nothing else, that Huang has caught onto a vibe that has been emanating out of those offices where workers are constantly being told their replacements are coming: fear.<\/p>\n He acknowledged that there\u2019s a real risk of that resonating within the next generation, who are already not feeling great about their future prospects. \u201cIf we scare everybody out of radiology so nobody wants to be a radiologist because computer vision is completely free and no AI is going to do a worse job than a radiologist, we misunderstand the difference between a job and a task. The job of a radiologist is patient care. The task is to read a scan,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n A similar shift has happened over in the c-suite at OpenAI. Back in 2025, Punchbowl News reported that Chris Lehane, OpenAI\u2019s vice president of global affairs, said it was important to \u201creally be straight up\u201d about \u201ccohorts that potentially get displaced.\u201d Basically, Lehane was calling for transparency about whose careers were about to be in jeopardy due to the expansion of AI.<\/p>\n Lehane\u2019s CEO, Sam Altman, has perhaps been among the most explicit in how he talked about the potential for job loss. Way, way back in 2015, when OpenAI was just a glint in his eye, Altman was telling people<\/a>, \u201cMy job is to help people destroy jobs.\u201d In 2023, he told The Atlantic<\/a>, \u201cJobs are definitely going to go away, full stop.\u201d When he said that, he even put it in the context that the more hopeful among his peers were lying to people: \u201cA lot of people working on AI pretend that it\u2019s only going to be good, it\u2019s only going to be a supplement,\u201d he said before dropping the \u201cjobs will be lost\u201d hammer.<\/p>\n Yet here we are in 2026, and the prognosis has changed. \u201cI\u2019m delighted to \u2060be wrong about this, I thought there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than \u200bhas actually happened,\u201d he told Reuters<\/a> last month.<\/p>\n Lehane, meanwhile, is running a new message up the flagpole, chastizing the people who dared threaten the livelihoods of people in a very \u201cwe\u2019re all trying to find the guy who did this<\/a>\u201d fashion.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of the conversation out there is not necessarily responsible,\u201d he told the San Francisco Standard<\/a>. \u201cAnd when you put some of those thoughts and ideas out there, they do have consequences. \u2026 This is really serious shit.\u201d He even went on to say that, \u201cOur job at OpenAI and in the AI space\u2014and we need to do a much better job\u2014is to explain to people why \u2026 this is going to be really good for them, for their families, and for society writ large.\u201d<\/p>\n There seems to be a tell in that comment as to what is going on and why the message has changed so drastically. AI is not popular, and it is not popular because people are afraid that it will take their jobs. More than half of Americans are concerned AI will put someone in their household out of work, according to a recent poll conducted by Reuters and Ipsos<\/a>. NBC found that just 26% of people view AI positively<\/a>, with nearly double that holding a negative view of the technology.<\/p>\n Unpopularity is one thing, and not necessarily enough to actually stop corporations from plowing forward. Labor unions remain weak nationally, and there is little by way of worker protection to prevent such a push. But citizens have found surprising success in fighting against the construction of data centers across the country, which potentially hinders the buildout these companies need in order to keep the cash flowing. As long as they are still in the growth and investment stage, they can keep burning through cash to put up these facilities with the promise, however improbable it may be, that they\u2019ll eventually create enough computing power to achieve artificial general intelligence. But the political roadblock of people pushing back against their big boxes of processors seems to be something of a signal that they are losing the PR war.<\/p>\n Just relax, and stop fighting <\/p>\n Hence, the shifting message is to stop fighting because this is going to be good for you. Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has tried his hand at this pitch<\/a> in recent weeks, suggesting workers should \u201cbe so happy\u201d about the introduction of AI because of how much easier it\u2019ll make their lives, claiming the technology will\u00a0\u201celevate all of these people.\u201d<\/p>\n Brad Smith, President of Microsoft, has gotten in on the act<\/a>, too. In a blog post meant to respond to the resounding number of graduate classes that have booed the very mention of AI during commencement speeches, Smith tried his hand at guiding the incoming members of the working class to a new view of the technology. \u201cConstant change has taught you how to adapt quickly. As AI reshapes how we work, you don\u2019t need to unlearn decades of habits the way some of us do. You are better equipped to move forward,\u201d he wrote. \u201cTechnology will change, but you can stand firmly and speak loudly for values that are timeless. Agency. Ambition. Dignity. All fulfilled through work and technology that gives us purpose.\u201d<\/p>\n Within Smith\u2019s pitch is a bit of seemingly unintentional transparency into the thought process of corporate America. At one point, he writes in what certainly feels like a begrudging manner that the reaction from students makes it clear that \u201cPeople will insist on having a say in deciding when and how AI is used.\u201d Now, it seems, the goal of these executives has become convincing people that they have been heard, that they are valued, and that they are anything but replaceable cogs who will get removed the moment it becomes cheaper to hand the task over to an AI agent.<\/p>\n Meta\u2019s approach to informing its workers about how it is using AI might be the most instructive for others across all industries, as they are increasingly told AI tools are just here to make their lives easier. Earlier this year, it was revealed that the company was logging its employees\u2019 activity<\/a>, recording how they do their work in order to train AI models on how to accomplish the same tasks. In a leaked audio, CEO Mark Zuckerberg reportedly said that Meta is using its employees for this because they are \u201creally smart people<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Scott](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/No-AI-protest-1.jpg\")
Scott Kwiatkowski from takes part in a demonstration at the Utah State Capitol to oppose the construction of the Stratos data center in Box Elder County on May 23, 2026 in Salt Lake City, Utah. The proposed data center, that will be about 40,000 acres and is speculated to use 9 gigawatts of power, is facing heavy backlash. \u00a9 Photo by Natalie Behring\/Getty Images <\/p>\n![\"Protesters](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/AI-Protest.jpg\")
Protesters gather with banners and placards outside the offices of Google Deepmind at a protest organized by PauseAI UK and other groups concerned in controlling the development of advanced Artificial Intelligence systems, in London on February 28, 2026. \u00a9 Photo by JUSTIN TALLIS \/ AFP via Getty Images Losing popularity <\/p>\n