AI Could Eliminate Half of White-Collar Jobs Within Five Years, Says Anthropic CEO
Work News | New Stardom
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One of the AI industry’s leading figures is warning that artificial intelligence may soon eliminate millions of white-collar jobs. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, said in recent interviews that AI could replace half of all entry-level white-collar positions within the next one to five years, pushing U.S. unemployment to as high as 20%.
Amodei pointed to entry-level roles across sectors such as finance, law, consulting, and technology as particularly vulnerable. Many of these jobs, he said, are at risk of disappearing before most people realize the scale of the shift. “Most of them are unaware that this is about to happen,” he told Axios.
Anthropic, which recently introduced its Claude 4 model, is seeing how quickly AI is shifting from assisting human work to automating entire tasks. According to Amodei, around 40% of users are already applying the company’s models to fully automate work, and that share is growing. “AI is starting to get better than humans at almost all intellectual tasks,” he told CNN.
Behind the scenes, companies are preparing. Axios reports that executives across industries are already reviewing whether AI systems can fully replace roles they once staffed with humans. In some firms, hiring has slowed as leaders wait for AI performance to reach the next level.
While Amodei believes AI has potential to bring major breakthroughs in areas like healthcare and economic growth, he also warned of the broader risks if wealth generated by automation flows mainly to tech companies. “It could become difficult for a substantial part of the population to really contribute,” he said. “The balance of power of democracy is premised on the average person having leverage through creating economic value.”
As governments lag behind in regulating AI, Amodei suggested policymakers may need to consider new forms of taxation on AI-generated revenue to redistribute economic gains. “That would be a reasonable solution to the problem,” he told Axios.
“The only move that’s going to work is steering the train — steer it 10 degrees in a different direction,” Amodei said. “But we have to do it now.”
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