AI may eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within the next five years. That was the stark warning from Dario Amodei, the CEO of AI startup Anthropic, in May. Despite backlash from some in Silicon Valley, Amodei hasn’t backed down.
“The first step towards solving these problems is kind of being honest with the population that these problems exist,” Amodei told Axios during an event in September.
Amodei said the rate of AI advancement and its adoption by society make predicting the actual timetable for job displacement difficult.
“As with most things, when an exponential is moving very quickly, you can’t be sure,” he said. “This could happen faster than I imagine, this could happen slower than I imagine, or something very different could happen. I think it is likely enough to happen that we felt there was a need to warn the world about it and to speak honestly and in candid terms about it.”
The disconnect, Amodei said, is that some people think because of what AI is capable of now that such a mass displacement isn’t possible.
“What I’m really worried about is where the technology is going,” he said. “And I think there’s a little disconnect here where people will say, ‘Oh you’re worried about AI is going to do to jobs, but AI can’t do this, AI can’t do that,’ well we’re talking about today’s AI.”
