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OpenAI Chief Economist Tells ECB Forum AI Won't Replace Human Workers

June 30, 2026 at 10:59 EDT

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Ronnie Chatterji, OpenAI's chief economist, said at the European Central Bank's annual retreat in Sintra, Portugal, that the rise of artificial intelligence will not make human workers superfluous.

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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