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OpenAI Chief Economist Says AI Will Not Replace Human Workers at ECB Event

June 30, 2026 at 10:59 EDT

Policy & Regulation
Sales & Business

OpenAI Chief Economist Ronnie Chatterji said on June 29, 2026, that the rise of AI will not make human workers superfluous, urging an assessment framework that accounts for how jobs evolve. He made the remarks during a conversation with ECB Executive Board member Philip R. Lane at the ECB Forum on Central Banking 2026 (June 29–July 1) in Sintra, Portugal, as reported by Bloomberg.

Sintra · OpenAI Economic Research

"AI Won't Be a Substitute for Human Workers"

OpenAI chief economist Ronnie Chatterji told central bankers that exposure to AI does not equal job loss — the real story is jobs evolving, with AI taking on unwanted tasks and augmenting the work people want to do.

900+

occupations analyzed — covering 152 million jobs

99.8%

of internal weekly output tokens now come from agentic Codex (June 2026)

How 900+ occupations sort by near-term AI impact

More jobs face little immediate change than high automation risk.

46%

Little immediate change

18%

High automation risk

The augmentation case

AI works as a complement, not a replacement — sometimes lower performers catch up, sometimes top performers pull further ahead. Direction: augment human work.

The caution

A "capability overhang" and uneven adoption can polarize outcomes — frontier firms use agentic tools far more heavily than the rest.

The reframe

Jobs "evolve" rather than "vanish."

Predicting losses from AI exposure alone is insufficient — AI can substitute for some tasks while raising demand and creating new ones. "We need to think a lot harder about what jobs are, how they will evolve."

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