Anthropic: AI Technology Will Cause Unemployment to Soar

The CEO of Anthropic, one of the world's leading artificial intelligence (AI) labs, has just warned that AI technology could cause a serious unemployment shock in the very near future, and policymakers and business leaders are not ready for this scenario.

Sharing in an interview with CNN, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned of a not-so-distant future where AI outperforms humans in most areas of intelligence.

This is a major challenge that society as a whole needs to prepare to face and adapt to. This development will affect every profession, including the highest leadership positions.

Mr. Amodei believes that the AI tools that Anthropic and other companies are racing to develop could eliminate half of low-level office jobs and push unemployment to 20% in the next 1-5 years.

That means the US unemployment rate could increase fivefold in just a few years. The last time it hit a similar level was at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.

This is not the first negative warning about AI's potential to disrupt the economy . Earlier this year, a survey by the World Economic Forum (WEF) found that 41% of employers planned to cut staff due to AI automation by 2030.

But Mr. Amodei’s prediction is particularly noteworthy because it comes from a leading industry leader, all the more so since Anthropic is currently selling AI technology that promises to do nearly the entirety of a typical human workday.

History shows that technological advances often automate low-skill, low-wage jobs, and displaced workers can be retrained for higher-paying positions.

But if Mr. Amodei’s prediction is correct, AI could also wipe out more highly specialized “white collar” roles that require years of expensive training andeducation , and these workers may not be easily retrained for equivalent or higher-paying jobs.

Against this backdrop, Mr. Amodei suggested that lawmakers might even need to consider taxing AI companies.

Researchers and economists predict that the jobs of professionals ranging from paralegals and payroll clerks to financial advisors and programmers could change significantly, if not be eliminated entirely, in the coming years.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said last month that he predicts AI will write 50% of the company's code by 2026. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also said that up to 30% of his company's code is currently written by AI.

Currently, about 60% of Anthropic's AI users use the technology to assist humans, while 40% use it to fully automate human work, and the rate of automation is increasing, said Mr. Amodei.

Last week, Anthropic released a new AI model that is capable of working independently for nearly seven hours straight.

While there are skeptics who say the pace of AI improvement could slow due to a lack of high-quality data for training, most experts agree that the world needs to start planning for the economic impacts of AI./.

(Vietnam News Agency/Vietnam+)

Source: https://www.vietnamplus.vn/anthropic-cong-nghe-ai-se-khien-ty-le-that-nghiep-tang-vot-post1041568.vnp