Anthropic CEO warns AI will destroy half of all white collar jobs

By now, you've likely already heard that some companies want to replace human workers with AI. Now, the CEO of one of the biggest AI companies is warning that AI may be coming for your job sooner than expected.

In an interview with Axios, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said that AI could "wipe out" as much as half of all entry-level white-collar jobs. Amodei, who runs the OpenAI competitor behind the ChatGPT rival Claude, said that the resulting job loss would cause a spike in unemployment as high as 20 percent in the next five years.

Just this week, Mashable covered a new report which found that AI is already affecting the number of entry-level jobs in the tech sector and, in turn, young people who've just graduated into the workforce.

Amodei, however, is saying that it will get much worse than that.

Is there a coming AI layoff "bloodbath," or is this more AI hype and doomerism?

According to Amodei, he is speaking out now because he feels it is the responsibility of AI companies to warn people. He says governments and other AI competitors just aren't taking it seriously or making the public aware of the potential issues that AI will bring.

Amodei wants the government and AI companies to stop "sugar-coating" what is potentially on the way. 

And what's on the way? Amodei says "the possible mass elimination of jobs across technology, finance, law, consulting and other white-collar professions, especially entry-level gigs."

In the interview, Amodei addressed how he believes AI will bring about huge benefits like disease cures and other medical breakthroughs, as well as a growing economy. However, the negatives just aren't being addressed with the urgency they should be, according to Amodei's remarks to Axios.

In a post on Bluesky, however, Billionaire Mark Cuban disagreed with the Anthropic CEO's assessment. 

"Someone needs to remind the CEO that at one point there were more than 2m secretaries," Cuban wrote. "There were also separate employees to do in office dictation. They were the original white collar displacements. New companies with new jobs will come from AI and increase TOTAL employment."

While Amodei didn't address Cuban directly, he did reference AI skeptics in his interview who believe that AI companies are just hyping up their products' capabilities with these scenarios.

For now, at least some companies have realized that they jumped the gun on replacing humans with AI. Last year, buy now, pay later service Klarna started replacing human customer service representatives with AI. Just this month, the company shared that it made a mistake and was looking to hire back its human workforce.