Anthropic CEO says AI could cause up to 20% unemployment within five years, wipe out half of all entry-level white collar jobs

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who helms the company behind ChatGPT rival Claude, has warned that artificial intelligence could wipe out a staggering 50% of all entry-level white collar jobs, while spiking unemployment by up to 20% in the next five years, in a new interview with Axios.

Amodei reportedly said in an interview that AI could wipe out "half of all entry-level white-collar jobs", Axios reports, while increasing unemployment by 10-20%. Perhaps more unsettling, he says this could happen in the next one to five years.

According to the report, Amodei says that AI companies and the government should stop "sugar-coating" what's coming, namely, "the possible mass elimination of jobs across technology, finance, law, consulting and other white-collar professions, especially entry-level gigs."

Axios says Amodei wants to buoy government and AI companies into action to get the country ready for such an event, and to protect people from the incursion.

Amodei hinted that lawmakers are asleep at the wheel, saying most people seemed unaware "that this is about to happen," and that because it sounds crazy, people simply don't believe it.

The report highlights Anthropic's Claude 4 Opus rollout, which recently launched with the ability to code at a near-human level, as well as scheme and deceive. It's the same model that we recently reported sabotaged shutdown mechanism commands, even attempting to blackmail the humans trying to turn it off.

Amodei told Axios he envisions a future where "Cancer is cured, the economy grows at 10% a year, the budget is balanced — and 20% of people don't have jobs" as one possible scenario that could be unlocked by the "unimaginable" possibilities of AI.

Amodei reiterated that producers of AI tech have a duty of care and an obligation to be honest about the future threat, and highlighted a clear, strange dynamic at play. Amodei believes critics think AI builders are just trying to hype up their own products, ignoring warnings about the future of AI as a result.

He went on to spell out how this "white-collar bloodbath" could unfold, driven by the advancements of AI models like OpenAI's ChatGPT. The U.S. government, driven by fears about falling behind China or spooking workers, stays quiet about the dangers and doesn't regulate. Likewise, most Americans ignore the growing threat of AI, specifically to their jobs, before finally business leaders realize the savings of replacing humans with AI, doing this en masse, with everyone else only realizing before it's too late.

According to the report, Anthropic's own research shows AI is currently being used mostly to augment jobs done by humans, but Amodei says this will eventually progress more towards automation, where AI does the job instead of a human.

The report highlights further context around significant layoffs at companies like Microsoft and Meta's vision of a future where mid-level coders will soon be unnecessary.

Amodei likened the task to a train that can't be stopped by just stepping in front of it, but rather one that requires steering. He says a change in course is possible but needs to be enacted "now."

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