July 4, 2011 - In late May, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei threw out a shocker, according to a July 3 report by the foreign media outlet TechCrunch: he warned that theAI developments could see half of all entry-level jobs disappear within five years.USAs unemployment rate may soar to 20%.
Amodei is not alone in his assertion: more and more corporate executives are starting toIntensive warningsProphecy AI's Growing Impact on the Job MarketSuch "prophecies of doom" have even evolved into a means of competing with each other.
1AI has learned from the report that similar warnings were frequent even before Amodei spoke out. Take JPMorgan Chase, for example, whose head of consumer banking, Marianne Lake, said at its annual investor day in early May that AI would reduce headcount by about 10%.
And after that, not only are such statements becoming more frequent.The language is also more aggressiveAmazon. In a staff letter last month, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that the "once-in-a-century" technological change would lead to downsizing, while the CEO of secondhand clothing platform ThredUp told a conference that the number of jobs replaced by AI would beFar beyond the public imaginationFord's Jim Farley even asserted last week that AI will "actuallyReplacing half of America's white-collar jobs”.
The Wall Street Journal notes that this is in line with executives' previous comments about whether AI "will replace human jobs."Widespread cautionThis is in stark contrast to the attitudes of some of the world's leading AI giants. While tech leaders, including some AI giants, have said that society's concerns are overblown, there is a steady stream of early warning signs that a massive restructuring of the labor market is on the horizon, whether people are ready for it or not.