OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has just revealed that there is a “long list of things” that haven’t been so great about ChatGPT’s rapid rise, starting with the speed at which it has reshaped the world. The very system that could eradicate illnesses, he said on The Tonight Show, can also be misused in ways society isn’t remotely prepared for.

“One of the things that I’m worried about is just the rate of change that’s happening in the world right now,” Altman told Jimmy Fallon. “This is a three-year-old technology. No other technology has ever been adopted by the world this fast.”

“Making sure that we introduce this to the world in a responsible way, where people have time to adapt, to give input, to figure out how to do this—you could imagine us getting that wrong,” he added.

But with more than 800 million people now using ChatGPT each week, the stakes couldn’t be higher. The technology is now woven into everyday life—from classrooms to boardrooms—often faster than guardrails can keep up. 

Fortune reached out to OpenAI for further comment.

Jobs may start changing ‘pretty fast’—but we’ll all figure out new jobs to do, Altman says

Altman’s comments come as he also has worries about the rate of change of his competitors. The 40-year-old reportedly declared “code red” last week to push more resources toward improving ChatGPT as pressure from Google and other AI rivals, including Meta and Anthropic, intensifies.

Together, the companies’ AI endeavours have driven historic productivity gains and new methods of gathering and analyzing information—but also deepened uncertainty about the future of work. Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei has been especially blunt, warning that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level, white-collar jobs.

Altman, however, has remained largely optimistic. Even if the job disruption is swift, he argued it will be offset by entirely new types of work.

“The rate at which jobs will change over may be pretty fast. I have no doubt that we’ll figure out all new jobs to do and I hope, much better jobs,” he added on The Tonight Show.

Some of those future roles, he has suggested, could be literally out of this world.

“In 2035, that graduating college student, if they still go to college at all, could very well be leaving on a mission to explore the solar system on a spaceship in some completely new, exciting, super well-paid, super interesting job,” Altman said to video journalist Cleo Abram earlier this year.

Space-related job growth is also an area Google CEO Sundar Pichai is bullish about—with expansion possible in as little as 10 years’ time.

“One of our moonshots is to, how do we one day have data centers in space so that we can better harness the energy from the sun that is 100 trillion times more energy than what we produce on all of Earth today?” Pichai said on Fox News late last month. 

In five years, AI will be curing diseases, Altman predicts

For all the uncertainty swirling around AI’s impact on jobs, education, and society, there’s one area where tech leaders remain almost universally optimistic: medicine. 

Amodei has said the technology could lead to the elimination of most cancers, whereas Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates predicted “breakthrough treatments.” Already, AI is making progress in speeding up drug discovery and helping scientists analyze biological data at scales once thought impossible.

AI models could usher in an era of disease-curing innovation as soon as 2030, Altman added.

“Five years is a long time,” Altman said. “Next year, I hope we’ll start to see these models really make small-but-important new scientific discoveries. And in five years, I hope they’re curing diseases.”

There was some relief at CNN with last Friday’s announcement that Netflix was buying Warner’s studio and streaming businesses, since the cable network would not be a part of that deal. But that quickly changed on Monday with Paramount’s announced bid, which includes the cable assets that Netflix doesn’t want and, if successful, opens the possibility of a combined CNN and CBS News.

The management uncertainty adds to what is already a challenging time at CNN, where there was no doubt who was in charge before swashbuckling founder Ted Turner sold his company in 1996. “That era might as well be the roaring ’20s for how long ago it feels,” said Ross Benes, senior analyst at emarketer.com.

The dueling bids between Paramount and Netflix now “lead to more uncertainty and greater anxiety among the current CNN staff and among those of us who served for many years as leaders of CNN under Ted,” said Tom Johnson, former CNN president in the 1990s.

Paramount’s bid, which must be approved by shareholders and regulators, could be seen favorably by President Donald Trump, who is closely allied with Paramount Skydance chairman and CEO David Ellison as well as his father, Oracle founder Larry Ellison. But Trump has already expressed anger at the company on social media for Sunday’s “60 Minutes” report on former U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

Prior to Friday’s announcement, Warner Bros. Discovery had said it planned to spin off its cable television networks including CNN, Discovery, HGTV, the Food Network and TLC, into a separate company. The growth of streaming has made cable networks an unattractive business.

CNN’s television ratings have tumbled to the extent that it is firmly the third-rated cable news network behind Fox News Channel and MS NOW, formerly MSNBC. Its CEO, Mark Thompson, has aggressively moved into digital with a new subscription service and said that management of Discovery Global, the spinoff company, has already approved a 2026 budget investing in the plan.

“I know this strategic review has been a period of inevitable uncertainty across CNN and indeed the whole of WBD,” Thompson told staff in a memo Friday. “Of course, I can’t promise you that the media attention and noise around the sale of our parent will die down overnight. But I do think the path to the successful transformation of this great news enterprise remains open.”

Thompson had no additional comment on Monday, a spokeswoman said.

Since Paramount’s takeover of CBS News this past summer, the network has taken steps to appeal to more conservative viewers with the installation of Free Press founder Bari Weiss as editor-in-chief. Weiss is moderating a prime-time discussion this weekend with Erika Kirk, widow of slain conservative activist Charlie Kirk.

During an appearance on CNBC Monday, Ellison answered, “yeah,” when asked if he would combine CNN’s newsgathering operation with CBS News. What exactly that means is unclear.

“We want to build a scaled news service that is basically, fundamentally, in the trust business, that is in the truth business, and that speaks to the 70% of Americans that are in the middle,” Ellison said.

Trump has spoken highly of both Ellison and his billionaire father. But he was clearly angry about Lesley Stahl’s “60 Minutes” interview with former MAGA supporter Greene, who broke with him and recently resigned from Congress. Trump said on Truth Social that his real problem with the show is that the new corporate ownership allowed it to air.

“THEY ARE NO BETTER THAN THE OLD OWNERSHIP,” Trump said, adding he believed that “60 Minutes” had gotten worse from his perspective since the changeover.

CNN is not likely to find out soon who its new owners would be. Even before the Paramount bid, experts had predicted the Netflix deal would face more than a year of regulatory hurdles.

“There is such a need for independent, unbiased news services,” Johnson said. “I so hope that the new CNN owners will see that as their fundamental mission.”

If Netflix eventually wins, emarketer.com’s Benes predicted it would be likely that the spinoff company, Discovery Global, would be shopped around to other buyers.

“CNN will be in limbo for a while no matter which bidder purchases CNN,” he said.

Technology remains the hardest-hit private-sector industry, with more than 150,000 job cuts announced so far this year as firms continue to reset headcount after the boom years while they increasingly lean into automation. Telecom providers, food companies, services firms, retailers, nonprofits and media organizations are all shedding workers as well, in many cases at double- or triple-digit percentage increases over last year.

Specifically, U.S.-based employers announced 1,170,821 job cuts in the first 11 months of 2025, up 54% from the same period in 2024. That makes 2025 one of only six years since 1993 in which announced layoffs through November have topped 1.1 million, putting it in the company of 2001, 2002, 2003, 2009 and the pandemic shock of 2020. November alone saw 71,321 cuts, the highest for that month since 2022 and well above typical pre-pandemic November levels.

Daniel Zhao, chief economist for Glassdoor, noted in an interview with Fortune that this actually understates the typical, true number of layoffs, citing federal data from the JOLTS survey that roughly 1.7 million people had been laid off over the same period. “The interesting thing that we saw in our research is that the shape of these layoffs is changing,” he said. “So instead of these large one-off layoffs, we’re seeing rolling layoffs and even some smaller layoffs as well.”

The “rolling layoff” must be considered amid the many conflicting signals of the economy of 2025, when “affordability” politics emerged to reflect mass unrest among vulnerable workers. Fears of a bubble in artificial intelligence have coincided with worker anxiety and Gen Z despair over an elevated unemployment rate and a dearth of entry-level positions.

Earnings reports increasingly reveal, as many executives call it, a “bifurcated” or “K-shaped” economy, used to describe the different trajectories of rich and poor. The wealthier cohort is spending freely, with the upper 10% accounting for nearly 50% of consumer spending (and absorbing elevated costs passed through from tariffs), while the lower-income consumer shows increasing signs of strain. Morgan Stanley analyst Mike Wilson believes a “rolling recession” was tearing through different sectors of the economy and that, from April onward, a “rolling recovery” has been underway in 2025.

Analysts at both Goldman Sachs and Bank of America Research have noted that this recovery is a financial one, reflected in stock prices and soaring profits—and increasingly in less workers required in white-collar positions. The era of “jobless growth” and process over people is emerging into view, thanks to the forever layoff.

Inside the ‘forever layoff’ model

Glassdoor’s 2026 Worklife Trends analysis describes a structural shift away from rare, large-scale reductions toward frequent layoffs affecting fewer than 50 workers at a time. These “forever layoffs” now account for a majority of cuts in some data, with the share of small layoffs rising from well under half in the mid-2010s to more than half by 2025. The new model allows leaders to continuously adjust headcount in response to markets and AI adoption without the reputational and morale shock of a single blockbuster layoff event.

Consultants say rolling layoffs give executives maximum flexibility and can lower severance and restructuring costs, while keeping operations running by redistributing work slowly instead of wiping out entire teams overnight. But what looks efficient on paper, Glassdoor warns, creates a slow bleed culture in which coworkers quietly disappear, workloads creep up for survivors and no one ever feels truly safe in their role.

Zhao described it as “keeping workers in suspense, where they’re constantly worried about their job security and they can’t focus on their work.” Even though these forever layoffs might sneak under the radar and not generate quite as many negative headlines, “people internally know what’s up, they’re going to recognize what’s happening.” Ultimately, he said he believes it has a really negative impact on culture and morale and hence productivity.

Zhao cited the job-rejection rate that appears in Glassdoor data, which has been declining for two years. “I think what’s going on there is job seekers recognize that they don’t have the leverage to negotiate, as much leverage to negotiate on an offer, or they don’t feel confident in their ability to find a better offer elsewhere.” The end result is more people “settling” for just any job, not the right job.

Glassdoor’s review data shows employee mentions of “layoffs” and “job insecurity” in company ratings are now higher than they were in March 2020, when the pandemic first shut down the global economy. That suggests workers in late 2025 feel more anxious about losing their jobs than they did at the onset of a once-in-a-century public-health crisis. Trust in senior leadership has eroded as well, with negative descriptions of executives—such as “misaligned” or “hypocritical”—rising sharply since 2024.

Hiring plans are not offsetting the damage. Through November, per the Challenger report, employers have announced 497,151 planned hires, down 35% from the same point last year and the lowest year-to-date total since 2010. With hiring at a decade low and serial layoffs becoming normalized, many job seekers are taking roles they would once have rejected simply to regain a foothold in a less forgiving market.

Zhao pushed back on the idea of a “jobs recession,” although he acknowledged that hiring has been “very sluggish” for much of the last two years and there is some evidence of job growth slowing significantly and reaching negative territory, including some months with job losses.

“I think you would want to see more evidence before declaring an actual jobs recession,” he said. “A month here and there of negative jobs growth is not good, but we don’t want to declare a new trend based on just a month or two’s worth of data.”

AI, restructurings, and the new power balance

Behind the cuts, a cluster of forces is reshaping corporate staffing decisions. Challenger’s report shows restructuring, business unit closures, and market or economic conditions have driven the bulk of 2025 layoffs, with tens of thousands of jobs also explicitly tied to AI adoption. Since 2023, employers have blamed artificial intelligence for more than 70,000 announced job cuts as they automate routine work and reorganize teams around new tools.​

The squeeze is showing up not just in corporate restructuring plans, but also in real-time payroll data. ADP’s November report, released Wednesday, found private employers shed 32,000 jobs last month—but nearly all of the losses came from small businesses, which cut 120,000 positions, while large corporations actually added 90,000 workers.

ADP chief economist Nela Richardson, in the report, called the decline “broad-based,” but emphasized that small firms with limited cash flow and thin margins “are really weathering an uncertain macro environment and a cautious consumer.” Small employers have faced rising operating costs from tariffs, utility bills, and a Fed hesitant to cut rates, a burden that larger companies have been far better positioned to absorb.

The divergence underscores the widening K-shape in the labor market. White-collar and corporate jobs are being trimmed through rolling, under-the-radar layoffs, while small businesses are facing outright contraction as they struggle with tariffs, higher utility bills, and softer consumer demand. Small firms are almost always the first to lay off workers in a downturn because they feel the pullback in spending sooner and have far less room to absorb rising input costs, Richardson toldAxios. Larger companies have the cash flow, scale, and financing to wait out uncertainty, even as they quietly restructure teams, but small employers simply run out of margin.

However, Howard Lutnick, Trump’s commerce secretary, blamed the data on the “Democrat shutdown,” rather than tariffs, during an interview on CNBC. The Cabinet secretary also said those figures will “rebalance and they’ll regrow,” claiming “this is just a near-term event.”

Zhao said he thinks the forever layoffs are contributing to the “malaise” that workers feel about the economy of 2025. “There’s a significant amount of uncertainty and anxiety that workers are feeling around job security and the the risk that another layoff might be coming in just a month or two.” It means, he added, that “workers are constantly on edge.”