The hiring announcement exposed a symmetry that should unsettle anyone watching this conversation for signs of movement. Optimists and skeptics each walked away from the same OpenAI news having confirmed what they already thought — optimists citing the headcount growth as evidence that AI creates more than it destroys, skeptics framing it as a talent war that postpones rather than cancels the automation agenda. The collision between Altman's town hall statement and the subsequent hiring news became the most-shared version of this argument: not because it offered new information,…