Anthropic researchers predict a ‘pretty terrible decade’ for humans as AI could wipe out white collar jobs
https://fortune.com/2025/06/05/anthropic-ai-automate-jobs-pretty-terrible-decade/
Anthropic researchers predict a ‘pretty terrible decade’ for humans as AI could wipe out white collar jobs
https://fortune.com/2025/06/05/anthropic-ai-automate-jobs-pretty-terrible-decade/
36 Comments
post-work utopia is not what is gonna make the next decade tough
“Speaking to [AI podcaster Dwarkesh Patel](https://archive.is/o/hNVPG/https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=64lXQP6cs5M), Anthropic’s Sholto Douglas said he predicted there would be a “drop in white-collar workers” over the next two to five years, even if current AI progress stalls.“
There is this whole spectrum of crazy futures. But the one that I feel we’re almost guaranteed to get—this is a strong statement to make—is one where, at the very least, you get a drop in white-collar workers at some point in the next five years,” he said. “I think it’s very likely in two, but it seems almost overdetermined in five.”
“The current suite of algorithms is sufficient to automate white-collar work provided you have enough of the right kinds of data,” he added. Trenton Bricken, a member of the technical staff at Anthropic, seconded his fellow researcher’s point, saying: “We should expect to see them automated within the next five years.”
Douglas said this scenario could lead to a “pretty terrible decade” before things start to improve for the better.“
Imagine a world where people have lost their jobs, and you haven’t yet got novel biological research. That means people’s quality of life isn’t dramatically better,” he said. “A decade or two after, the world is fantastic. Robotics is solved, and you get to radical abundance.”
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicted that within five years, AI could automate away up to 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs.”
My experience with AI has been underwhelming. The AI has returned citations that don’t exist; it has provided different answers to the same question; it sometimes returns an answer to a question not asked.
I am not an expert, but I think it will have limited success in replacing jobs, as its inconsistencies and inaccuracies become more visible.
So sick of this company vying for relevance through fear and intimidation.
These clowns are so out of touch. We have near free labor around the world now- so if we aren’t at radical abundance now then we aren’t going to be there when “robotics is solved”
People who would make a ton of money if their product somehow wipes out all white collar jobs predict their product will wipe out all white collar jobs
Check this out, I am building a new, devastating nuclear weapon and I sell it to the public by telling them it will destroy all life on Earth and everyone should tremble in fear.
Or
I tell them it will bring peace on Earth and we can massively reduce military spending because superbomb will protect us
The only reason to talk about your own product this way is to make it sound more powerful than it actually is. It is a con.
I suspect that a large part of the rolling “AI is going to destroy white collar jobs” is just giving cover to corporations looking for an excuse to trim their org charts and now being given a “legitimate” excuse to do so. Once it starts to become clear that much of the available AI out there for non-coding white collar jobs is just glorified search engines, things will start to go quiet and the world will move on.
can chatGPT collate how many times this one company’s pointless speculation has been spouted verbatim by ‘news outlets’ and then those articles used to create r/futurology posts? I swear I’ve seen this exact one at least 5 times in the past couple weeks.
In the future robots do all the white-collar jobs while humans are relegated to lubricating their servos and recycling their batteries.
I also hear the good people at the Coca-Cola company are predicting a terrible decade for thirst.
Genuine question: what happens to cities when white collar jobs are decimated? Nobody will be able to afford rent. Where do those people go?
So, unlike the previous awesome decade…
I think the ‘can AI replace specific jobs’ conversation is naïve. I think what AI will actually do is make us more productive – which sounds good but it isn’t. AI will be able to understand what it is and is t good at and manage tasks or projects, including prompting human colleagues to add their input or oversight at certain stages.
AI will also be monitoring those humans constantly, overseeing their work and interrogating inconsistencies wherever they arise. It will be the ultimate micromanager.
I’m old enough to remember when the father of AI said to stop training radiologists … 15 years ago. Not saying we won’t get there, but all these AI articles want to do is hype up valuations.
It’s funny how all of these articles about how AI is going to replace all of our jobs seem to come from the AI companies themselves. Not to say that AI can’t or won’t be damaging to a lot of industries, but maybe be skeptical when the tech company is telling us the product they sell is so great, it will change the world soon, just give it a couple years, but also buy in now to get ahead of the curve.
The fear around white collar displacement is completely valid. For the first time it’s not just about automation of repetitive tasks, but entire layers of knowledge work getting compressed.
There’s another side to this, though: if AI is getting smarter by training on us — our data, decisions, and behaviors — then maybe the value system needs to shift too. What if people aren’t “at risk of replacement,” but instead fueling the whole thing?
Instead of trying to save every old job, maybe the goal is to rethink how people derive value. Our data could be the new labor.
Curious if anyone here is exploring models like that?
If he means all his developers are going to retire at a young age I bet he’s right but everyone else back to work.
AI usage tax for corporations that is used to offset taxes and fund social programs? 🤷♀️
And noone believes me when I talk about this – and I tell them to get assets, own something, enough to carry you through no jobs. I’m currently a developer, got a priviledged position, perhaps from luck – I’m well aware that I may be a daycare worker in a few years, since I assume those jobs we want to stay human – I hope my investmensts can then carry the remaining of what used to be my high salary.
Anthropic researchers after they find out that no other jobs are as emotionally draining and likely to cause depressions as white collar jobs: <pikachuface.jpg>
Gonna be wild when nobody is buying these company’s products because they’re all jobless.
My company (I work for) is using it to do more so far.
– Faster, more helpful responses for support
– More design iterations
– More customer feedback
We’ve run very lean and gotten by for years. Maybe a point will come where all the things we never had time for are done.
I still wouldn’t want to be 10 years into my career at this point in time.
Necropolitcs means the government and business leaders will be happy with people dying so long as they get to do whatever they want.
They can push AI all they want but at the end of the day people have to use it. A collision place I wanted a quote from sent me to some AI analysis thing where I was supposed to upload pictures of my vehicle. Instead, I went to the contact form and submitted my request manually. A human being got back to me and gave me what I wanted. I’m not interested in AI.
Despite this, they’re *still* working on building the Unemployment Engine.
LLM has diminishing returns and it will not lead to AGI.
Companies join this fad about leading to massive changes in the job market because this is how they look as powerful as possible leading to more exposure and sales. Make it seem a world changing event, make the world tremble in fear of what’s next.
Funnily enough the area that it will lead to most job losses is programming due to productivity increases. It won’t do any programming alone, that’s a joke.
It’s already happening in NZ. The government is pushing for AI use in the public service to eventually replace digital jobs. This may be good for the tax payer, devastating for workers. Education is very expensive here so training into a new job, especially later in life with housing and children is challenging. There needs to be widespread analysis and solutions. Gen X, retiring in the next 10 years on, already hit by a lifetime of job insecurity, financial challenges from recessions and inflation may be the first generation to experience mass homelessness.
Yeah there’s pretty good reason to be pretty worried about this. It’s not new news at this point. But it’s not just fluff either. The reality is that within a few years jobs that used to have 10 people doing a role, will only need 1 or not even that because AI and automation just make things so much faster. And where do those 9 people go?
I can’t see why so many people aren’t connecting the increase in AI abilities with the end of capitalism. Look up info on the 30% unemployment tipping point and we are going to hit it quickly. My doom and gloom guess is in less than a year.
First, AI doesn’t wipe out human jobs. CEOs wipe out human jobs. We need to quit letting them blame the technology.
They are really putting a lot of money into this limp media blitz to cover up for all their earned negative press.
The hype is getting ridiculous, I bought it at first, I am very interested in AI, sure it helps with some tasks, but it so bad outside of high level. I gave several models specific prompts on some simple data to analyze. All of them made assumptions that made absolutely no sense. I corrected them, but they ignored and continued with their original assumptions. Sure it might get better, but I have yet to see anything that I would leverage.
Also how do you go from point A to point B. For instance for business strategy, sure it could give strategy suggestions, but how is it implemented? I could see, maybe, entry level jobs eliminated. As of now I trust my new grads more than any AI system. Maybe I just haven’t been using the right tools.
Not surprising that Trump was mentioning to the U of Alabama student that they should pour concrete and forge steel. Guesss which types of jobs AI isn’t going to replace?
Also, with the push to get people to have babies, I wonder how they expect people to be able to afford to live? If AI is taking so many jobs, how are people supposed to pay for these kids?
Is the attack on women’s rights just a stepping stone to keeping them out of the workplace since there will be fewer jobs?
I really really don’t care about AI company’s opinions of where AI is headed. As far as im concerned, they’ll promise anything to get more investors.
Anthropic, in particular, seems to be astroturfing reddit with these headlines.
Quick reminder, AI only wipes out jobs if corporate decision makers give the jobs to AI instead of to people. If you end up out of a job because of AI, there’s a human that decided that because profits were more important than you.
Finally, someone thought about the poor billionaires and corporations. We were worried for them