Diego Amodei, the CEO of Anthropic, warns that artificial intelligence could eliminate half of all entry-level office jobs and increase unemployment to 10–20% over the next five years, reports Axios.
This alarming statement came after the introduction of his company's latest AI models, Claude Opus 4 and Sonnet 4, which can perform tasks more efficiently and accurately. This heightens the risks that the CEO of Anthropic is warning about.
Amodei urges the U.S. government and AI developers to take the threat seriously: according to him, lawyers, consultants, financiers, and entry-level IT workers may face mass layoffs as AI systems increasingly take over routine tasks at or above human capability. "Most people are not even aware that this is about to happen," he stated, suggesting official briefings for lawmakers, requiring companies to disclose AI model usage data, and implementing a tax on AI-generated revenues to fund retraining programs for workers.
He believes that AI has the potential to aid in cancer treatment, drive economic growth, and balance budgets, but without proactive job preservation measures, millions will find themselves unemployed, and inequality will worsen.
Major corporations are already replacing human workers with AI assistants: Mark Zuckerberg predicts that mid-level programmers will start losing their jobs this year. In a January podcast with Joe Rogan, he remarked, "By 2025, we at Meta, along with other companies, will have AI that can essentially perform the functions of a mid-level engineer capable of writing code." He stated that this will ultimately reduce the need for people in these roles. Shortly thereafter, Meta announced plans to cut its workforce by 5%. Amodei added that "once businesses see the benefits of replacing humans with AI, they will do so en masse."
To prevent this scenario, Amodei proposes:
- Publishing real-time data on AI usage by profession;
- Encouraging the augmentation of human labor rather than complete replacement;
- Implementing a "token tax" on AI transactions to redistribute profits.
"We can't just stand in the way and stop the train, but we can slightly alter its course. We need to do this now," concludes the CEO of Anthropic.