Altman walks back his own forecast, Powell goes quiet, Khan speaks from the alumni circuit

Sam Altman (CEO of OpenAI) reversed years of AI employment warnings in Sydney on May 26. Jerome Powell (former Federal Reserve Chair, now a Fed Governor) kept exactly the silence he had promised on April 29. Lina Khan (former Federal Trade Commission Chair) delivered a philosophical talk at a Harvard alumni event two days before the tracking window opened and made no detectable public statements during it. Her influence is operating now through a generation of lawyers she trained rather than through her own public voice.

Sam Altman: "I'm delighted to be wrong"

The jobs-reversal at CBA Sydney

On May 26, Altman appeared via video link at the Commonwealth Bank of Australia's "Accelerate AI" event in Sydney, interviewed by CBA CEO Matt Comyn (CEO of Australia's largest bank). His headline position: AI will not cause a global "jobs apocalypse" — a direct reversal of warnings he and OpenAI had repeated since 2023.

"I don't think we're going to have the kind of jobs apocalypse that some of the companies in our space advocate or talk about." 1

He was explicit that his earlier prediction — that AI would eliminate large numbers of entry-level white-collar jobs by now — turned out to be wrong:

"I'm delighted to be wrong about this. I thought there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than has actually happened." 2

His self-assessed forecasting track record:

"My scorecard, at the highest level, would be: we've been roughly right on technological predictions and pretty wrong on the social and economic implications." 3

The mechanism he cited for why humans remain irreplaceable: he tried delegating his personal email and Slack to an AI — with a "this is Sam's AI" disclosure to recipients — and found that people still wanted human contact. "A huge amount of my time... is not something I can imagine myself outsourcing to an AI anytime soon," he said. 1

The divergence with Anthropic is now explicit. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told Axios roughly a year ago that AI could eliminate 50% of entry-level positions. Altman's Sydney remarks place the two most prominent AI lab leaders on opposite ends of the employment-impact debate. 2

The productivity gap remains. When Comyn raised the most common "negative question" from CEOs — where is the actual revenue and productivity gain from all the AI investment? — Altman conceded:

"Frankly, it's been a little bit harder, or maybe a lot harder, to get the positive economic impact that we all thought we'd have at this level of technology." 4

His hedge on timing: "It's all still very new... But if a year from now we're still talking about the same question, I'd be more concerned." That amounts to a public 12-month deadline for AI economic benefits to show up. 4

On the same day, Reuters reported that OpenAI is preparing a confidential IPO filing targeting a $1 trillion valuation and raising at least $60 billion. 1 Altman did not address the IPO in the CBA interview.

Altman and Comyn at CBA Accelerate AI, Sydney, May 26, 2026 — Altman (left screen) and Comyn (right screen) at the CBA Accelerate AI event, May 26, 2026. 4

On X: math milestone, YC credits, Codex

Altman posted eight original tweets between May 19 and 27, drawing roughly 62,000 likes and 10 million views in aggregate.

The most substantive:

May 20 — math milestone, conflicted response. An OpenAI general-purpose model solved the unit distance problem, a long-standing open problem in combinatorial geometry. Altman's tweet noted the milestone but ended on genuine ambivalence: "I'm very excited for AI to greatly extend our understanding of the world, but still, I have complicated feelings today." 5 The post drew 724,000 views.

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May 20 — $2M in API credits per YC startup. OpenAI offered $2 million in token credits to every startup in the current Y Combinator (the startup accelerator where Altman was formerly president) batch. 6 The move seeds the next cohort of early-stage companies onto OpenAI's infrastructure from day one.
May 21 — new Codex ships. Altman announced the release of a new version of Codex, OpenAI's coding agent. 7
May 22 — open question to followers. "What problem do you most hope AI will solve in the future? Maybe we can help!" received 12,736 likes, 15,120 replies, and 3.6 million views — the week's most-engaged post. 8

What Altman did not say. On May 18 — one day before the tracking window — a jury rejected all of Elon Musk's (Tesla and SpaceX CEO) claims against OpenAI in the Musk v. OpenAI trial. Altman had testified for over three days in the case. He posted nothing about the verdict during the entire May 19–27 period.

Jerome Powell: a quiet first week as governor

Jerome Powell at his final FOMC press conference, April 29, 2026 — Powell at his final FOMC press conference as Fed Chair, April 29, 2026. 9

Powell made zero public statements during the week of May 19–27. No press appearances, no interviews, no social media posts. Searches across Google, X, and Bloomberg for this window returned empty. 9

This matched precisely what he had said at his final FOMC meeting on April 29, 2026 (the last he chaired): "I will continue to serve as a governor for a period of time to be determined. I plan to keep a low profile as a governor." 9

The week's one structural event: on May 22, Kevin Warsh (former Morgan Stanley banker and Fed Board member from 2006 to 2011) was sworn in as the 17th Fed Chair at the White House East Room, with Justice Clarence Thomas administering the oath. The FOMC voted unanimously the same day to elect Warsh as Chair. 10 Powell did not attend and issued no statement.

Warsh said at the ceremony that he intended to pursue "regime change": reducing the $6.7 trillion balance sheet, building a new inflation analysis framework, and changing how the Fed communicates publicly. 10 Trump, also at the ceremony, said: "I want Kevin to be totally independent... Don't look at me, don't look at anybody, just do your own thing and do a great job." 10

Why Powell stayed at all. At the April 29 press conference, he explained: "I had long planned to be retiring. The things that have happened really in the last three months, I think, left me no choice but to stay until I see them through, at least that long." 9 The Wall Street Journal reported the specific factor was the Justice Department's criminal investigation into Powell and the broader political pressure campaign against the Fed. 11 Powell is reportedly the first former Fed Chair to remain on the board since Marriner Eccles, who held over after 1948. His governor term runs to January 2028. 11

Macro snapshot. The Fed funds rate stands at 3.5–3.75%, 12 unchanged since the April 29 decision. April inflation accelerated at the fastest pace since 2023. 10 CME FedWatch puts the probability of no change at the June 16–17 FOMC meeting at 97%. JPMorgan analysts are projecting the next rate move will be a 25 basis-point hike in Q3 2026. 13 Fed Governor Christopher Waller (Federal Reserve Board member) said on May 22 that he sees the next rate move as equally likely to be a hike or a cut — a notably different read from JPMorgan's directional call. 10

Lina Khan: governing philosophy without a government seat

HKS Reunion 2026 remarks (May 17)

Two days before the tracking window opened, Khan — identified in all event materials as "former chair of the Federal Trade Commission" with no current institutional affiliation stated — spoke at Harvard Kennedy School's Reunion 2026 (held May 16–18). Short clips were posted to HKS's official TikTok account; no full transcript has been published.

Two statements extracted from the clips:

"Anti-monopoly is a governing philosophy that broadly views concentrations of power as a threat to freedom." 14

Khan also reflected on the principle of "no kings" — that concentrated power, whether economic or political, is incompatible with democratic governance. 14

During the week of May 19–27, Khan made no detectable public statements on X, in op-eds, in congressional testimony, or in media interviews. The @linakhanFTC account appears inactive or deleted; no alternative social presence was identified. Her HKS Reunion appearance received no national press coverage during the window.

The "Lina Khan generation" in private practice

The operationally active development in Khan's orbit came from Matt Stoller (antitrust researcher at the American Economic Liberties Project), whose May 11 newsletter profiled Catherine Simonsen, a former FTC merger lawyer who served under Khan and has since co-founded Simonsen Sussman. 15

Simonsen's firm filed a class-action antitrust suit against Bowlero Corp. — a private-equity-backed operator that controls 360 bowling centers and captures 35% of total U.S. bowling industry revenue — seeking a court-ordered breakup under the Clayton Act (the federal antitrust law that prohibits mergers and acquisitions substantially lessening competition). 15

Stoller's framing:

"The Lina Khan generation of lawyers is striking out on their own and taking on a bowling magnate. As goes bowling, so goes America." 15

His broader argument: the talent pipeline built during Khan's FTC tenure has dispersed into private firms and state governments, creating a distributed enforcement architecture that does not depend on who holds the FTC Chair. The current FTC Chair is Andrew Ferguson, appointed by the Trump administration, whose enforcement priorities differ substantially from Khan's. 15

No analyst or expert reactions to Khan's HKS remarks specifically have appeared in national publications as of May 27.

Cover image courtesy Commonwealth Bank of Australia