Academics and economists have long warned that rapidly advancing artificial intelligence will wipe out jobs and upend the global economy. Now that call is coming from inside the house.
On Thursday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned on CNN that the technology will spike unemployment sooner than political leaders and businesses expect — and they aren’t ready for it.
Amodei believes the AI tools that Anthropic and other companies are racing to build could eliminate half of entry-level, white-collar jobs and boost unemployment to as much as 20% in the next one to five years, he told Axios on Wednesday.
Meanwhile, his company, a leading artificial intelligence lab, is selling AI technology that it says can work nearly seven hours a day, the length of a typical human workday. A recent World Economic Forum survey found that 41% of employers plan to reduce their workforce because of AI automation by 2030.
However, some experts say AI will automate certain tasks rather than entire jobs. And skeptics say the rapid growth of artificial intelligence tools may slow down as companies run out of high-quality data to train their models and that the kinds of highly complex jobs human can reliably do are still far out of reach for artificial intelligence.
Still, Amodei’s comments are notable, coming from the CEO of a major AI company. Here are four takeaways from his interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper.
Amodei said the skills needed for white-collar, entry-level jobs — “ability to summarize a document, analyze a bunch of sources and put it into a report, write computer code” — could be done with AI, which is “as good as a smart college student.”
Amodei predicts AI tools could eliminate half of white-collar, entry-level jobs, bringing the unemployment rate to up to 20% in the near future.
While AI companies could reap big profits if businesses widely adopt their products, Amodei did say he supports levying taxes on AI companies.
It’s “definitely not in my economic interest to say that, but I think this is something we should consider.”
Amodei said he didn’t have an exact timeline on when these jobs will become obsolete for humans. But, he said, “it’s eerie the extent to which the broader public and politicians, legislators, I don’t think, are fully aware of what’s going on.”
“We have to make sure that people have the ability to adapt, and that that we adopt the right the right policies… but we have to act now. We can’t just sleepwalk into it.”
Amodei said humans will have to soon grapple with AI outperforming them “at almost all intellectual tasks.” Eventually, no one will be safe from AI automation replacing their jobs — even CEOs like him, he said.
If that happens, “we’re going to have to think about how to order our society,” Amodei said.
More people still use AI for augmentation, which enhances human abilities, rather than automation, which replaces humans totally. But that gap is quickly narrowing: Currently, 60% of people use AI for augmentation and 40% for automation, according to Amodei.
“We can see where the trend is going, and that’s what’s driving some of the concern (about AI in the workforce),” he said.
Amodei said it’s important for people to learn how to use artificial intelligence.
“Learn to understand where the technology is going. If you’re not blindsided, you have a much better chance of adapting,” he said.
It’s important for humans to spot when AI-generated content doesn’t make sense.
People should think critically for moments when the “AI system messes up intrinsically,” he said, adding that “the entity that’s controlling it, in some cases, may not have your best interests at heart.”
CNN’s Clare Duffy contributed to this report.
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