OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei are softening earlier warnings that AI would rapidly wipe out large numbers of white-collar jobs, as both startups prepare to go public.
Altman said this week that he was “pretty wrong” about how quickly AI would eliminate entry-level office work, adding that he no longer expects a “jobs apocalypse,” according to Reuters. Speaking at a Commonwealth Bank of Australia event, he said the “human part” of work remains more important than he anticipated.
Amodei, who has been warning that AI could erase up to half of entry-level white-collar jobs, has recently argued that automation could instead expand the scope of human work by boosting productivity and demand, according to Fortune.
“If you automate 90% of the job, then everyone does the 10% of the job,” Amodei said. “And the 10% kind of expands to be 100% of what people do and kind of 10-times their productivity.”
On LinkedIn, AI pioneer Yann LeCun posted, “I’ve said to not listen to Sam and Dario about the effects of AI on the labor market. They are now saying to not listen to their former selves. Could this have anything to do with their imminent IPOs – I repeat: listen to economists.”