Dario Amodei, CEO of leading AI lab Anthropic, has issued a stark warning about the accelerating economic disruption driven by artificial intelligence. Speaking to CNN and Axios, Amodei said AI could eliminate up to half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and push unemployment in the U.S. to 20% within five years, a level not seen since the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“AI is starting to get better than humans at almost all intellectual tasks, and we’re going to collectively, as a society, grapple with it,” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in an interview last week. “AI is going to get better at what everyone does, including what I do, including what other CEOs do.”
Amodei’s warning comes as Anthropic expands the capabilities of its AI models, including a new system that can operate autonomously for nearly seven hours. He revealed that 40% of users already employ AI for full automation, not just assistance — a number that is rising.
Calling for urgent regulation, Amodei floated the idea of taxing AI firms to ensure broader wealth distribution by saying it wasn’t tin his economic interest to say it, but if AI generates immense wealth, we need to consider mechanisms to share that value.
His remarks contrast with the more optimistic narratives offered by tech executives like Mark Zuckerberg and Satya Nadella, who foresee AI augmenting rather than replacing roles. But Amodei warned that this time may be different: the pace, breadth, and depth of AI’s capabilities could overwhelm traditional job retraining models.
Despite the risks, Amodei stressed AI’s potential to deliver global benefits, from accelerating science to curing disease.
“I don’t think we can stop this bus,” Amodei said. “From the position that I’m in, I can maybe hope to do a little to steer the technology in a direction where we become aware of the harms, we address the harms, and we’re still able to achieve the benefits.”
