Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warns that rapid advances in AI could eliminate up to 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs within the next five years
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic has warned that AI technology could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar positions within the next five years.
The prediction suggests unemployment could reach 10-20% as AI systems transition from augmenting human work to replacing it entirely. Such levels would be the highest joblessness rates since the Great Depression of the 1930s.
“AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs — and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next one to five years,” Cairo says.
From Claude to automation: Anthropic’s shifting role
Anthropic, which competes with OpenAI and Google in developing conversational AI systems, has built one of the market’s leading large language models (LLMs).
These systems process and generate human-like text responses across multiple applications.
The warning encompasses multiple sectors, with technology, finance, law and consulting facing particular vulnerability to automation.
Workers in these industries remain largely unaware of the approaching disruption, according to Dario.
“Most of them are unaware that this is about to happen,” he tells Axios.
“It sounds crazy and people just don’t believe it.”
Furthermore, current AI applications primarily serve as augmentation tools, assisting human employees with document summarisation, contract reviews, research tasks and email composition.
Anthropic’s Claude system provides these capabilities to businesses and individual users.
Dario predicts that this augmentation model will shift towards full automation within a compressed timeframe. The transition is an inflection point that many businesses have not prepared for adequately.
“It’s going to happen in a small amount of time — as little as a couple of years or less,” he explains.
Already, hundreds of technology companies are developing agentic AI systems designed to perform human work tasks without ongoing supervision.
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta says: “Probably in 2025, we at Meta, as well as the other companies that are basically working on this, are going to have an AI that can effectively be a sort of mid-level engineer,” as he said in January.
Microsoft and Walmart signals early job cuts
Evidence suggests AI-driven workforce reductions have already commenced across multiple industries.
Microsoft announced layoffs affecting roughly 3% of its workforce in May. Approximately 6,000 employees lost positions, with engineers representing a significant portion of those affected.
Meanwhile, Walmart eliminated 1,500 positions whilst implementing operational simplifications. The company has since introduced automation systems to reduce labour requirements within its supply chain operations.
CrowdStrike cut 500 positions whilst citing market and technological changes – and attributed the reductions to AI reshaping industry practices across sectors.
The company stated that it was at “a market and technology inflection point, with AI reshaping every industry”.
Aneesh Raman, Chief Economic Opportunity Officer at LinkedIn, recently wrote a column for the New York Times which argued that AI is already breaking “the bottom rungs of the career ladder”, with junior software developers, paralegals and retail workers at high risk.
These developments align with broader patterns of technological displacement affecting junior roles before progressing to more senior positions.
Anthropic CEO proposes token tax solution
Despite leading a company that develops the technology driving these workforce changes, Dario advocates for measures to mitigate negative employment impacts.
His proposals centre on transparency requirements and financial redistribution mechanisms.
He met with UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer in February to discuss AI’s role in Britain’s economic future – addressing regulatory frameworks and workforce transition strategies.
“We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming,” Dario says.
His proposed “token tax” would require AI companies to contribute 3% of revenues to government redistribution programmes. These funds would compensate workers displaced by automation technologies.
“Obviously, that’s not in my economic interest,” he says, “but I think that would be a reasonable solution to the problem.”
Trump administration adopts hands-off approach
Regulatory responses vary significantly across jurisdictions, with many governments prioritising AI development over worker protection measures.
As a result, US President Donald Trump has suggested implementing a ten-year moratorium on AI regulation to facilitate technological advancement.
Dario considers this approach insufficient for addressing automation’s workforce implications – arguing that outright prohibition of AI development lacks feasibility given global competitive pressures.
“You can’t just step in front of the train and stop it,” he says.
“The only move that’s going to work is steering the train — steer it 10 degrees in a different direction from where it was going.”
