Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned that a number of entry level jobs are at risk of being replaced by AI in the next one to five years leading up to 2031. Amodei said early white collar jobs in areas like finance, consulting, and tech will be first to be eradicated by advancements in the AI technology.
In a televised interview with Fox News, the Anthropic CEO said that the world may be progressing towards a serious employment crisis. He said, while the exact timeline of this approaching crisis is hard to predict, the next five years would make the situation crystal clear.
“AI CEOs talk about this in private. CEOs of other companies talk about this in private. And I really felt that, you know, the message that this is happening hasn’t been getting out to to ordinary people. Hasn’t been getting out to our legislators or congress people, either. And so I felt I needed to speak up on the record,” he said.
The chances of preventing this employment crisis are next to nil because AI development will not deescalate, Amodei said, highlighting the need for global regulators to start carrying out thorough assessment of the future impact of AI across sectors.
“At some point, we have to go beyond measuring this to actually taking action, to trying to build our AI systems in a way that augments rather than replaces. But that won’t be a long term solution either. There’s a wide range of actions that the government could take,” he noted.
The first steps towards mitigating potential risks, Amodei said, educating the next generation of workforce in AI uses should be prime focus.
What the Anthropic CEO said aligns with recent events observed industry-wide.
Just this week, for instance, the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) reported that Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is developing an agentic AI to work as a co-CEO and make day-to-day internal communication more efficient. The company has already started deploying native AI tools for staff members to use for daily tasks.
Those who lack in adapting to the technology are already at risk of losing their existing jobs.
Crypto giant Coinbase has already started firing employees who are not cooperating with the ongoing AI-revamp.
Amodei has pressed on his suggestion that governments should start pulling up their socks to tackle the negative impacts of AI advancement, because this is the technology that could create the cure for diseases like cancer and Alzheimer’s.