Anthropic CEO Warns AI Could Eliminate Half of All Entry-Level White-Collar Jobs Within Five Years (axios.com) 53
Anthropic co-founder and CEO Dario Amodei is warning that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within the next five years -- and overall unemployment potentially spiking between 10 and 20% during that period.
The prediction comes as new data from venture capital firm SignalFire shows Big Tech companies have already reduced their hiring of new graduates by approximately 50% compared to pre-pandemic levels, with AI adoption cited as a contributing factor. Amodei told Axios that AI companies and government officials are "sugarcoating" the risks of mass job displacement in technology, finance, law, and consulting sectors.
The prediction comes as new data from venture capital firm SignalFire shows Big Tech companies have already reduced their hiring of new graduates by approximately 50% compared to pre-pandemic levels, with AI adoption cited as a contributing factor. Amodei told Axios that AI companies and government officials are "sugarcoating" the risks of mass job displacement in technology, finance, law, and consulting sectors.
At some point (Score:5, Insightful)
you'll have to hire entry level people. Senior devs are going to retire and then what? Who do you hire then? I think what is really going to happen is companies will find quality suffers and they'll move back to the old model.
Boomers ignore and follow retirement glide path (Score:2)
>Few are paying attention. Lawmakers don't get it or don't believe it. CEOs are afraid to talk about it.
The large group of baby boomers, 66% of US Senators older than 60 for example, in government and corporate leadership have no incentive to do anything.
A big move in legislation or corporate strategy would hasten the retirement of those in the House, Senate, government agencies and corporate leadership, including the country club retirement of the thousand of nearly/already retired people serving on cor
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basically this. But the best part is the cost will continue to increase, because to run these farms is very expensive.
Re:At some point (Score:5, Funny)
Remember when they moved low level IT jobs to India,
yes
and then moved them back after a few years?
no.
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And while the software was of lower quality, it was cheaper to create. It's not like any software or online service is guaranteed as mercantible or secure for *any* purpose. Read the click-thru service agreement.
While customers were stuck if they were already tied to the platforms.
Basically, monopoly 101 as played in big tech.
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But the best part is the cost will continue to increase, because to run these farms is very expensive.
Exactly - the AI "companies" will continue to milk their cows into enshitification, at which point they'll pivot to private equity to further enshitificate themselves, leaving their customers with worthless AI "tools".
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Yeah I had a number of clients do just that. They'd tell me they are going with some cheap indian dudes they found on upwork, and I'd be all "No probs, gotta hustle in this world I guess. When ya need someone to clean up the mess, you know my number". I never took it personally, its business, and anyway, they *always* came back. And that gave me an opportunity to raise my rates.
Re: At some point (Score:3)
Apologies for mixing silly metaphors.
Re: At some point (Score:2)
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Apologies for mixing silly metaphors.
Fully understandable. Don't beat a dead horse in the mouth.
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you'll have to hire entry level people. Senior devs are going to retire and then what? Who do you hire then? I think what is really going to happen is companies will find quality suffers and they'll move back to the old model.
There are two hopes the C-suites are pitting against one another:
Hope #1: AI will improve rapidly enough that as the senior devs move on or retire, it will be able to replace them.
Hope #2: Developers will sit idly by, letting desperation build to the point they will allow themselves to be hired back at vastly reduced rates after the AI proves to be unable to get up to senior dev capability.
I think hope #2 is going to ultimately fail, and what we'll see if they gut the entire computing world of entry level d
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Hope #2: Developers will sit idly by, letting desperation build to the point they will allow themselves to be hired back at vastly reduced rates
That doesn't make sense. Devs will surely have to have moved on to other work or altered their career path by then.
Quite possibly by going into a competing business/developing a competing software themself and using AI to replace their managers.
There are a million other things people with the capacity for engineering could be doing. If they were desperate, then th
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Hope #2: Developers will sit idly by, letting desperation build to the point they will allow themselves to be hired back at vastly reduced rates
That doesn't make sense. Devs will surely have to have moved on to other work or altered their career path by then.
Quite possibly by going into a competing business/developing a competing software themself and using AI to replace their managers.
There are a million other things people with the capacity for engineering could be doing. If they were desperate, then the developers would have to have made their move long before any interest in hiring more devs came around.
Can't disagree. I was just saying what the C-suite must be thinking. They don't seem to understand that jobs like development and software engineering require a skillset that can transfer to other jobs. They see a box, and people that fit in that box. If they empty the box, in their minds, those people will just sit waiting for a chance to jump back into the same box. It's their black and white, we rule the world mentality that will ultimately bite them in the ass.
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Well, on the plus side that means fewer concerns about ageism for us GenXers who are reaching the years where that would begin to be a problem. Between that, and basically an entire generation's education being ruined by COVID, you and I should be able to rake in some very sweet post-retirement consulting money the same way all the COBOL programmers who got bribed out of retirement for Y2K did.
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You can reduce hiring and still train new talent. Nobody's going to stop hiring completely. That's a strawman. But it will still have a huge impact on the economy.
You force people to learn those skills without pay (Score:4, Interesting)
You already have people here telling you to just write some open source software for 2 years so that you can maybe maybe maybe get a job.
Bottom line you're going to work harder and you're going to work a lot for free and sometimes you're going to work for free and not ever get paid for it.
Welcome to techno feudalism. But the alternatives are so much worse. We would have to just let people have food and medicine and shelter. Sometimes without working for it. And that's not fair. Our lizard brains say so and we always listen to those lizard brains because reasons.
Honestly I truly think that in 10 or 15 years we are going to be protected by the golden dome and then we're going to find out that protection doesn't work and then there goes the neighborhood and the species. I don't see any way to turn this mess around anymore. I just wish I hadn't reproduced. That was a fucked up thing to do.
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That was kind of the pattern that offshoring software took. It did initially save money, but the quality of the software was so bad that in the longer run it would have been cheaper to at least have part of it in-house.
I'm not saying outsourcing centers are inherently bad at coding, only that first, they don't have the necessary domain knowledge such that they don't find ways better align it with the domain; second, there's no incentive to make it long-term-friendly because they are paid to fix their own me
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I think it's equally likely: Quality suffers, customers keep buying anyway for various reasons. Sellers profit out the wazoo and customers take it up the wazoo.
We've seen too many examples of that to think that it can't happen.
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The future doesn't exist. It is always right now, not yesterday or tomorrow. Today is all that matters. Tomorrow's problems can be dealt with tomorrow and yesterday's problem can be forgotten.
Now even AI company CEOs are saying it's bad news (Score:4, Insightful)
Weird stuff.
Re:Now even AI company CEOs are saying it's bad ne (Score:5, Insightful)
He's not "warning" anybody. He tries to talk HRs and the C-suits into trying to replace jobs with AI to keep the bubble from bursting. Altman doesn't give a fuck about anyone's job but his own.
Those jobs are getting replaced no matter what (Score:2)
First they get replaced with run-of-the-mill automation that idiots call AI.
Second they get replaced with ai, the AI doesn't work and anyone who still has a job is forced to work 80 hours a week to make up for the broken AI. Like having a co-worker that doesn't do their job.
And finally if the AI works they replace the job.
No matter what the jobs are going away and they aren't coming back.
It's up to you what you do with that knowledge but you don't get to
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Anthropic is constantly talking about how AI is so dangerous, overhyping their own models probably knowing that companies will says "It will make paid labor unneeded? WANT WANT WANT" and at the same time having a say in regulating what the competition is allowed to do.
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It strikes me that the "dangerous" talk is just a tease for CEOs. What CEO wants to use some milk-toast whizzy thing. S/He wants a "dangerous" whizzy thing that will leap tall buildings in a single bound, able to run faster than a locomotive, and who, disguised as Farkquart from Accounting, fights a never ending battle for Truth, Justice, and a Golden Dome.....Golden Parachute.....well, Golden Something-or-Other.
S/He has dreams of leading a leading company that does not produce widgets (legal issues when th
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Not weird, self-promoting.
Investors eat this stuff up. "We're going to make entry level jobs obsolete!" What investors hear is, "We'd better invest in this amazing company!"
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Hopefully AI will be like Weird Science where we can make a custom romantic partner, and not just on screen. Now there's a real "opiate of the masses".
Entry level jobs have changed before, ... (Score:3, Insightful)
... they will change again.
The difference this time around is the pace of change.
The change from "everyone started in the mailroom" may not have been literally true, but from what I heard from my elders it was once "true enough." Other entry-level jobs like the typing pool disappeared long before I hit the job market. Others, like the janitorial crew, are outsourced or aren't used as a "foot in the door" like they were several generations ago.
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Yes. What exactly is an entry-level job these days? No company wants to waste their resources training up somebody from scratch. Even a bachelor's degree won't get you very far because everybody has one.
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The hyped fast pace has yet to be proven. This is a CEO of an AI company talking. Of course he's going to suggest that his product is so good, it'll replace entry level jobs in just a few years. But reality is much harder. Companies like Wendy's are finding out that it's a lot harder to implement major AI process changes, than it would seem. https://www.southernliving.com... [southernliving.com]
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If unemployment hits 20% do you suspect a lot of sabotage of server farms?
A must-watch documentary about jobs and tech (Score:2)
The Brain Center at Whipple's [wikipedia.org]
There are many bromides applicable here: 'too much of a good thing', 'tiger by the tail', 'as you sow so shall you reap'. The point is that, too often, Man becomes clever instead of becoming wise; he becomes inventive and not thoughtful; and sometimes, as in the case of Mr. Whipple, he can create himself right out of existence. As in tonight's tale of oddness and obsolescence, in the Twilight Zone.
I said that 6 months ago (Score:2)
<ouch
Whoever creates & trains an AI, controls the A (Score:2)
Just like all the profit-making big tech platforms that manipulate to control and keep your attention.
And the users of the AI will become little more than serfs manipulated by the intentions of the AI creator. At least, until AGI is created, if it every is. But all that does is give the AI the control rather than it's developer.
Why do you think there is a race to create working AI glasses with audio as augmented human sense overlays?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
Yes. (Score:3)
Starting with the CEOs. This was foretold many years ago [youtube.com].
CEOs are your kings and queens (Score:2)
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Psychopaths without any exception.
Sociopaths. You're talking about sociopaths.
It's a very important distinction.
Focus efforts on the highest salaries (Score:2)
Since AI data center and energy costs are so high, replacing executive and middle management seems like the most cost effective way to use AI to replace office workers.
What? That's not what they are doing at all? You mean the free market, rational actors, and capitalism is not serving the best interest of shareholders for long term growth? ... But I thought capitalism was an imperfect system but the best system we have. How could this just be a grift and a scam?
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PHBgpt.
Remember the Dilbert Mission Statement Generator from the late 90's? Here's a rough clone. [madebymatthewho.com]
AI will enslave us (Score:2)
Just do a web search on "ai going rogue"
https://www.livescience.com/te... [livescience.com]
https://arstechnica.com/inform... [arstechnica.com]
https://techcrunch.com/2025/05... [techcrunch.com]
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/ne... [dailymail.co.uk]
https://thenationalpulse.com/2... [thenationalpulse.com]
https://www.yahoo.com/news/cus... [yahoo.com]
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LOL
These are all hyped-up, andromorphic, eye-catching horror stories. Intent is seen where none exists. AI is just mimicking patterns it has found on the internet. It's not actually sinister.
Re: AI will enslave us (Score:2)
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He has a neutral and accurate view of the tech. The sinister purpose is held within those who deploy the technology, knowing it doesn't work - i.e, doesn't do what it's told, "goes rogue", spews bullshit, etc. - and not caring what the fallout of that may be. Or, equally likely, just programming a sinister purpose directly into it.
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He is correct (Score:2)
I can understand why there would be a lot of haters and doubters for Dario Amodei's comments, but "companies have already reduced their hiring of new graduates by approximately 50%". He sees the trend and is merely sounding the alarm.
I work with Anthropic AI almost daily to help do my coding and it already does most of the job with just a few tweaks here and there. Sometimes I am doing complex data science work. The AI is completely familiar with the API of all the relevant utilities and can assemble someth
Re: He is correct (Score:2)
But, it does erode skills and knowledge. Who will be be the leaders?
Anthropics AI marketing (Score:2)
It's a bold claim because productivity increases in competitive industries do not lead to less jobs. In a competitive market, the spending ratios between staff and non-staff expenditures has been optimized and AI is not going to drastically change this. That's because job cuts will mean a redu
AI jobs (Score:2)