Anthropic CEO says it’s time to wake up on AI job losses

As the job market already shows signs of tightening due do AI, Anthopic’s Dario Amodei brings a stern warning to the labs and the government.

— AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white collar jobs, he tells Axios — and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next five years.

We need to prepare and protect the nation for this jarring risk, he says further, and adds that AI can now code at near-human levels.

It really is coming for you job
As large AI companies keep improving their models to meet human performance at more tasks, people are unaware of the risks to the jobs market, he opines, and wants people to be ready for the downside to this:

— Cancer is cured, the economy grows at 10% a year, the budget is balanced — and 20% of people don’t have jobs, he says of future.

Already failing to act
— Most of them are unaware that this is about to happen, Amodei tells Axios. — It sounds crazy, and people just don’t believe it.

In his scenario, the government is failing to act because it fears losing ground to China, and worries about spooking workers. And he sees this already happening.

— It’s going to happen in a small amount of time — as little as a couple of years or less, he says.

The solution is to speed up public awareness and more transparently explaining the workforce changes coming.

Learning to use AI
We also need workers to better understand how AI can augment their tasks today, which gives them a better shot at surviving the future.

With superintelligence moving closer, we also need a healthy debate on policy solutions in preparation, including job retraining and better spreading the wealth creation by BIg AI.

He mentions taxing tokens as a possible solution, but we need to prepare right now, he says.

— You can’t just step in front of the train and stop it, Amodei says. — The only move that’s going to work is steering the train — steer it 10 degrees in a different direction from where it was going. That can be done. That’s possible, but we have to do it now

Read the full interview at Axios. Discussion on r/singularity.

See also: Big Tech stops hiring new graduates, as entry level jobs dry up and Big Tech embraces AI coding, hitting 30% of software