Surely a bot can’t spend a full morning deleting emails and call it a day by 3pm…or can it? The billionaire CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, told Axios this week that AI could eliminate 50% of all white-collar, entry-level roles within the next one to five years, potentially pushing unemployment rates up 10% to 20%.
He even floated a “token tax” that would require AI companies to pay 3% of their revenue from each use of their models to the government, which could then reinvest it in some way, such as into retraining programs for workers.
Is he for real?
Critics immediately pointed out that “white-collar bloodbath” rhetoric is just as much a part of the AI hype machine as Studio Ghibli memes. Mark Cuban said Amodei needed to chill, pointing to past technological advancements and automation pushes that displaced workers like secretaries for a while, but ultimately created new industries and jobs.
Still, the fear of AI taking your job may be warranted…especially if you’re just entering the workforce. Recent college grad unemployment rose to 5.8% during Q1, the highest it’s been since 2021, according to a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. And unemployment has spiked in technical fields that have seen rapid advancements in AI.Earlier this month, Microsoft announced it was laying off 3% of its staff, including many engineers.
Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike cut 5% of its workforce (500 jobs), saying AI was reshaping the industry.
But AI may not be ready for prime time. A few weeks ago, Klarna reversed course and started hiring humans again after pivoting to AI customer service agents.—MM
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