AI: Will it soon take your job?

A "white-collar bloodbath" could be imminent, said Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen in Axios.com. Dario Amodei, "one of the world's most powerful creators of artificial intelligence," warned last week that this rapidly advancing technology could wipe out half of all entry-level jobs and send unemployment soaring to 20% within five years. Most workers and lawmakers "just don't believe it" and aren't preparing for the coming transformation of workplaces, said the CEO of the AI firm Anthropic. But as AI rapidly approaches "superhuman intelligence," Amodei believes employers will start replacing tens of millions of workers in "as little as a couple of years." In software engineering, it's already begun, said Kevin Roose in The New York Times. Amodei recently unveiled a tireless AI coding program that can replace engineers earning six figures. Mark Zuckerberg plans to replace Meta's mid-level coders with AI, and LinkedIn and other firms have introduced "AI-first" policies, requiring managers to determine whether AI can perform a task before hiring a human. "Among people who pay close attention to what's happening in AI, alarms are starting to go off."

So far, at least, there's little evidence of an "AI jobs-pocalypse," said The Economist. Some firms that have tried to outsource work to AI have discovered the tech doesn't yet meet their needs, forcing them to slow their plans or hire back some human workers. Even if AI does disrupt the job market, "we've been here before," said Rich Lowry in National Review. In the late 20th century, personal computers drove down demand for typists, secretaries, and clerks, and factory automation threw manual laborers out of work. In a free market system, workers have to adapt to change, and once-comfortable jobs such as programming, consulting, and paralegals "shouldn't be immune from the effects of automation any more than factory work."

Still, change this dizzying requires some oversight, said Steven Levy in Wired. Not only does AI development threaten the job market, developers warn that it could become so superintelligent it will escape human control and make "catastrophic" decisions about our fate. Some AI systems have already tried to deceive their creators. But regulation of AI has "fallen out of favor" in the second Trump administration, and most tech leaders are urging us not to let China get ahead on AI. The U.S. appears to be racing "full-speed toward a future that it can't contain."

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