Sam Altman said OpenAI’s Codex made him feel “a little useless and sad,” triggering a wave of backlash on X as users linked his comments to real-world job losses caused by AI.
The remarks came after Altman tested Codex, an AI coding agent built by OpenAI, and said the tool generated better feature ideas than he could himself.
“I am sure we will figure out much better and more interesting ways to spend our time,”
Altman wrote, adding that he felt “nostalgic for the present.”
Users on X responded by mocking what they saw as billionaire vulnerability disconnected from the economic impact of AI-driven automation on workers.
“You will have a $100 billion-dollar parachute exit,”
One user replied, contrasting Altman’s concerns with white-collar job losses blamed on AI adoption.
The reaction was intensified by frustration over OpenAI’s planned retirement of GPT-4o, a widely used model set to be deprecated on February 13 alongside other legacy systems.
Critics said the decision revived concerns about model stability and trust, particularly after OpenAI previously reversed an earlier attempt to retire GPT-4o following user backlash.
The episode highlights growing tension between AI developers’ enthusiasm for rapid progress and mounting public anxiety over displacement, reliability and who ultimately bears the cost of automation.