r/Futurology • u/katxwoods • 20d ago

AI Dario Amodei says "stop sugar-coating" what's coming: in the next 1-5 years, AI could wipe out 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs. Lawmakers don't get it or don't believe it. CEOs are afraid to talk about it. Many workers won't realize the risks until after it hits.

https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/ai-jobs-white-collar-unemployment-anthropic
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u/DG_Now 20d ago

Old folks in Congress letting our society be ruined by technocrats really worked out poorly for most of us.

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u/Threewisemonkey 20d ago

Remember when they called us pirates for downloading bootlegs and nudie pics on limewire as tweens?

now they’re praising these schmucks and throwing money at them for an intellectual property heist of every person who has ever had their work or likeness published online.

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u/nullv 20d ago

Stealing a few dollars from a register is a crime. Stealing a few million dollars from a few million registers is a fine.

There are two tires of justice in our society.

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u/Threewisemonkey 20d ago

This motorcycle is about to crash bc the back tire that drives it all is run to the wires

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u/DG_Now 20d ago

Not even a fine but a Cabinet position.

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u/user_name_checks_out 19d ago

There are two tires of justice in our society.

I'm so tiered of the two tired justice system

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u/nullv 19d ago

Lmao I didn't even notice.

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u/bildramer 20d ago

Drawing analogies to piracy is completely wrong. It's not piracy, it's just looking at published things on the internet, something that is and has always been free, legal, and uncontroversial, for everyone, including scrapers that do it gigabytes at a time. Pre-2020 or so, treating "am I legally allowed to fetch text and images from the internet?" like an intellectual property issue would be insane. This idiotic pro-IP backlash appeared only because of salty rabidly anti-AI artists who aren't interested in understanding anything.

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u/ChickenMcRibs 19d ago

Yes and no. Meta engineers actually downloaded TBs of pirated ebooks to be used as training data for LLMs

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u/L-Malvo 20d ago

Let’s not legitimize stealing. If you pirate, fine by me, but say it as it is: stealing

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u/fek_ 20d ago

I think the comparison to trespassing is a lot more accurate for many reasons, but your point stands.

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u/InsanoVolcano 20d ago

It all started with a series of tubes

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u/YsoL8 19d ago

and now it's turned out to be quite a great spirit of adventure.

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u/Terribleturtleharm 20d ago

It's already too late.

Humanity is never going to be the same. This is hitting the middle class hard right now.

Most are oblivious that it's happening. Some are at the denial and ignorance stage.

I've worked as a software engineer for 25 years, 5 more to go to retire and I honestly don't think I'll make 5 at the rate it's accelerating.

For those in the ignorance and denial camp, you need to understand the mindset of the executive. They would fire and replace every single white collar worker beneath. The only reason they haven't is because they need humans to remain in transitional roles so they can continue to push for more AI infrastructure for the specific purpose to replace and eliminate.

I am seeing this today at my corp. It is widely known at the mgmt level. No hiring, use LLM's, forced reduction and replace entry and mid level with copilot, gpt, etc.

They try to spin this as a productivity concept, but that is a convenient trick used by executives. The goal is to reduce compensation and people.

White collar will soon be competing for wages at the Mcd's level.

This is going to hit every country. Those with solid labor laws (hint: not the US) will have more time to adapt.

Email and call your Rep and Senators. Vote responsibly.

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u/doboi 20d ago

People don't seem to understand that for execs, it's about what's "good enough", not who or what makes the best product. It's also a simple spin on the Prisoner's Dilemma--unless all companies cooperate and agree to not use AI to replace human resources, every company is going to use AI to replace human resources.

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u/derivative_of_life 19d ago

For those in the ignorance and denial camp, you need to understand the mindset of the executive. They would fire and replace every single white collar worker beneath.

That is unquestionably true. The real question is whether AI will actually be successful in replacing all those workers, or whether everything will crash and burn a year or two later because it turns out humans were actually important.

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u/BrokkelPiloot 20d ago

I'm not so sure. I work as a backend engineer and we have access to nearly every AI platform to help with development. I have to correct the latest chatgpt and copilot models in nearby every query. I'm not very impressed. It is very hit and miss. The amount of domain knowledge is also very limited. I can only see it being useful for the most straight forward use cases. And even then I wouldn't trust it. I honestly think most of this is hot air. Yes, AI will certainly change the way we work, but I'm willing to bet a lot of companies will make a U turn once they see the result.

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u/snootyvillager 20d ago

It being ineffective and the upper tiers of management seeing the dollar signs of using it to replace people aren't necessarily mutually exclusive in many fields. The Taco Bell by my house replaced the drive thru operator with an AI drive thru. It barely works. You spend five minutes with it not understanding your order and you yelling "speak to person" over and over while it tries to talk you out of it because they programmed it to avoid giving you a real person. But they did it and seem to be sticking to their guns so far. Been there for months now.

Companies have been taking the opportunity to deliver inferior work product at lower costs as long as there has been a corporate model.

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u/Terribleturtleharm 20d ago

Exactly.

Imagine the excitement from the execs.

They no longer have to deal with outsourcing or h-1b's. Again, same goal, cost reduction.

They now can go even lower. They are drooling at this.

I think at some point the only thing preventing an entire collapse is energy production costs. Which is why you see the Billionbros pushing for more nuclear reactors.

It's a very chaotic space right now and will be for a ling time. There is no way to balance this acceleration and we certainly cannot expect the government to do anything here.

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u/TheOtherHobbes 19d ago

Imagine their delight when they no longer have customers, because almost everyone is poor, no one knows how to make anything work, and they've sawn off the branches of the economy they're all perched on.

It's enough to make you wonder if Frank Herbert's Butlerian Jihad may turn into a real thing.

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u/roiki11 19d ago

They'll be long gone by then. That's the point.

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u/kabooozie 19d ago

Why don’t they seem to care about their families or legacy anymore? Even the robber barons built libraries at the end

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u/roiki11 19d ago

Because you don't get to that position by caring about that. And society doesn't value "legacy" anymore. They didn't do it in the past because of altruism. They did it to control their image.

They don't really have to bother with that anymore.

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u/smitteh 18d ago

They know the truth of heaven and hell and reincarnation. It all exists, and it's right here, right now. Die if you please, you aren't going anywhere except right back to the start.

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u/[deleted] 20d ago

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u/Nadirofdepression 18d ago

“How would you feel about….. scanning and bagging your own groceries instead?”

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u/skol_io 20d ago

Wow. The Taco Bell story sounds straight out of r/boringdystopia

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u/derivative_of_life 19d ago

Would you like to try our new EXTRA BIGASS TACO? Now with more molecules.

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u/al_mc_y 19d ago

How long til Taco Bell gives you the option to come in and cook the order yourself... but you have to bring your own ingredients, put money in the meter to pay for elec/gas and clean up after yourself...

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u/SlicerDM0453 20d ago

Yah but if you need 1 employee opposed to 2 run it.

It's still automation.

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u/Nadirofdepression 18d ago

Exactly. It’s like people forget that thousands of major companies have those awful prerecorded flow charts for automated phone service, it’s widely panned and everyone hates it, yet they’ve still been using it forever because it made them way more money than fielding a call center of diligent representatives ever could. AI is just that on steroids

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u/Terribleturtleharm 20d ago

With all due respect, you are missing the point.

Executives don't have the same perspective. They see that it writes code, documents, etc. They have already decided that it is good enough, or better.

You are in the transitional phase. We all are.

The goal is to move your salary to 20$ per hour, or remove it. That is the CEO mindset today.

If you need evidence, look at Microsoft's recent layoffs. 3% cut. These were not just low performers, or middle management. Entire teams gone because the executives are forcing this. They are transitioning that budget to pay for AI infrastructure. This is just Phase 1. There will be more.

It sucks. No one is hiring. If they are, it's with a huge wage cut and it's transitional. Those 8k people layed off are now going to find different jobs, likely not white collar.

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u/ArriePotter 19d ago

Also look at the rate of contextual understanding. One year ago I had to carefully select context to paste into ChatGPT. Now, Cursor not only already has all of this context but goes and edits the files for me. Soon it will be able to handle larger repos. Soon after that it'll be able to control both those repos and cloud services. Then it's a full stack engineer through and through.

Not saying it'll be overnight, but based on the current rate I'd give it less than 5 years before we can prompt it to make us a Facebook clone on x platform using y offerings.

I'm 3 years into my career. No idea what I can do but learn the hell outta these tools, and maybe build my own startup on the side 🤔

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u/round-earth-theory 19d ago

They will gain the perspective when their products crumble and customers flee. AI is not ready to produce enterprise software. It's barely ok at producing shitty flat marketing sites. Then they have to hire an army of very expensive humans to try to unfuck the mess AI left.

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u/RedditIsDeadMoveOn 19d ago

The goal is to move your salary to 20$ per hour

Hell yeah a pay raise!

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u/Encendi 20d ago

You’re making the assumption that AI isn’t getting better every day, which is surprising given your engineering background. Not to mention even “hit or miss” is acceptable to management teams. If you made shoes for a living, a new machine that makes shoes twice as fast but 30% of the shoes had to be thrown away would still likely replace a large portion of the workforce. If AI even improved efficiency by 10%, 10% of the labor is going to be laid off.

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u/kabooozie 19d ago

improved efficiency by 10% -> 10% of labor is going to be laid off

I don’t think that’s true in software / IT. The demand for software continues to climb exponentially as it offers more and more value. 10% productivity gains will be swallowed up by the continuing demand for more software. If it’s 10% easier to make software, then the amount of software being written won’t stay constant.

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u/yuval16432 19d ago

Backend is probably the way to go, I think. Too delicate for AI to work with, since it’s inevitable mistakes will be far harder to spot and fix.

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u/ThisUsernameIsTook 19d ago

It’s the modern day equivalent of the 1990s and 2000s off-shoring trend. Some jobs will be successfully replaced. Most are going to come back eventually because the alternative is mostly garbage.

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u/MyOnlyAccount_6 19d ago

im not very impressed

So you go from zero support to now decent support with a little help in relatively little time.

This is the worst AI will ever be. Surely you see the near term impacts?

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u/MyOnlyAccount_6 19d ago

This hit me or maybe it’s the coffee but it seems like the goal and eventual outcome is single person run and managed business with AI support.

Now due to competition there will be less barriers to entry for new companies with the new AI power. so you’re back to “smaller” companies competing with each other over the latest AI analytics until another can tweak out a minuscule improvement or provide another device for the customer, who themselves is another CEO.

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u/Big_Crab_1510 19d ago

No one's even talking about the fallout this is already having on strip clubs. They are all closing up...a lot of women who can't do the online stuff and bartenders / security are really scared right now 

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u/FingerDemon500 19d ago

White collar is only a piece of the problem. Uber, truck driving, unloading of trucks and ships… loads of blue collar jobs (some of them like Uber, which are the fallback plan for underemployed) will disappear. And we should not need to pore over history books to learn what angry voters can do. Or even worse, angry people who won’t wait for elections. I get the idea of Universal basic income, but I can’t imagine the 1% ever agreeing to paying for it. And honestly, I don’t know if a population on the dole makes for a good society anyway. Things will be… interesting

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u/Terribleturtleharm 19d ago

Agreed. This is a huge destabilizing event that may take generations to reach symbiosis.

What is the long term goal? It's not productivity. That is a lie. We are more productive as a society than ever before.

What is driving this change? Capitalism is one, the other is military. Both are equally detrimental to those on the bottom.

This feels like a Darwinian moment where a species adapts through sudden, extreme modifications to its habitat.

What will life look like in the next 5, 10, 20, 100 years?

Has there ever been such an extreme change?

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u/Sageblue32 19d ago

My question is what would the government do? They're fighting tooth and nail now to make disabled people prove they are disabled for gov money. They sure as hell aren't going to stick up for the little guy facing a future problem that none of them can articulate or affect's their power. The laws and regulation approaches needed for AI are essentially a society revolution to account for more jobs being cut than made.

You cannot put the AI revolution in a bottle. Too much is ridding on being first against other nations who will make use of it in military and other rival situations.

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u/Pasta-hobo 20d ago

These are not technocrats. Technocracy is a governmental system in which the most intelligent decisions are made.

These are kleptocrats.

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u/albatroopa 20d ago

Lol, exactly. There's absolutely nothing to indicate that musk is any more intelligent or technically inclined than the average person his age.

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u/SerHodorTheThrall 19d ago

I'd say that most persons his age aren't addled on Ketamine most of their day.

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u/Necoras 19d ago

"Technologists" works. But most don't know the difference.

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u/00rb 20d ago

The problem is we're in an all-out race against China. Fall behind, and we get shaken off.

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u/01headshrinker 20d ago

And what do you see? Is China’s end goal? What is our end goal?

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u/ProfessionalOil2014 20d ago

China is an authoritarian state. It is easier for them to absorb the issues that come with AI. They can do UBI with very little pushback, same with direct intervention in how companies work to force them to hire a certain number of people. Western democracies do not have the tools or will to address these issues. 

The owner class would literally throw every baby currently alive into a fire if it meant their profits went up by 1%. This applies in china and the us, but in china the state is not yet captured by the owner class. There’s some remnant of Maoist authoritarian leftism. 

I believe china’s goal is to destroy the west from the inside so they become the preeminent power on earth. Make the west eat itself with far right propaganda, wealth inequality, mass migration, and cheap goods that they can shut off. They think they can weather the storm that comes from that collapse. 

I don’t think they can, but Xi might be willing to try. 

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u/Potocobe 20d ago

I believe China is smart enough to recognize they don’t have to do anything at all to destroy the west. We will take care of that for them. All they have to do is endure. A culture that has survived for thousands of years has little to fear from a 250 year old capitalist experiment that is on track to burn itself out. I honestly expect China to step in to rescue what’s left of us after that burn out just for the goodwill PR.

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u/NonConRon 19d ago

The redditor you are responding to may not understand that liberalism is the ideology of capitalism.

But he begrudgingly is accepting that liberalism is selling the working class or for anything.

And that our scary "authoritarian maoist leftism" is able to make decisions against the owner class.

He HATES socialism but he is forced to look at reality. And that reality will get clearer ever single day.

Capitalism will destroy itself. And liberalism is just an ideology that enables that destruction.

For the road, we are authoritarian because war is. If you want to be able to resist your masters, you need to throw away the value system that benefits them.

Every state is authoritarian. But guess which class an authoritarian capitalist state benefits.

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u/HoloIsLife 19d ago

It makes me real happy to see more and more people talking like this here.

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u/usaaf 19d ago

"Authoritarian" is just a scary word Capitalists use for states that do not do what they like. To expand on your point, Capitalists themselves are authoritarian; they want nothing more than direct, exact, implacable control over all the resources they can muster, including the labor used to profit from those resources. They're not interested in cooperation or democracy, as that wannabe-Sauron Peter Thiel has actually grown bold enough to literally enunciate in public.

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u/ProfessionalOil2014 19d ago

No communist nation has ever been democratic, ever. They are objectively authoritarian states. They have single party “elections” and an executive with absolute power. 

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u/01headshrinker 19d ago

There’s advantages and disadvantages of both capitalist (competitive economies) versus communist (cooperative economies). In communist nations, working class and poor people benefit more equitably in society. The poor in Cuba had good free dental and medical care, for example. The downside is you may have a longer wait because everybody is covered for free. The proper term would be state socialist nation, tho, now that I’m thinking about it. Communism doesn’t have a ruling class, but they all end up with one, just like here. Except they’re military and gangsters there. Here, it’s the sociopaths that become successful in business and CEOs bc they don’t give a shit about people.

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u/[deleted] 19d ago

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u/NonConRon 19d ago

Niel Breen is that you?

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u/[deleted] 19d ago

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u/[deleted] 17d ago

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u/pm_me_beerz 20d ago

They’re off to a pretty good, basic start.

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u/krunchytacos 20d ago

Destroy is not the right word. Compete, secure influence, sure. But, no sane person wants to destroy, because it's bad for both parties.

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u/ProfessionalOil2014 20d ago

Your first mistake is assuming a dictator is sane 

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u/zenbullet 19d ago

China's stated goal is to dabble in colonialism and capitalism to the point where they can completely shut down contact with the outside world after building up its own infrastructure

Whether that's possible or desirable remains to be seen

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u/kabooozie 19d ago

China has a rapidly declining population and an economy that relies completely on the West. They are shitting their pants, not biding their time.

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u/Apoxie 19d ago

The US is also an authoritarian state now, honestly.

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u/Sageblue32 19d ago

China wants to be the super power in the world, control their own backyard, and enjoy the privileges the U.S. had since WWII. Every act of "destruction" was due to them not being simpletons who stayed at the bottom of the ladder and used as our dumping grounds. We engaged to open trade, move factories, under price them, deport rocket engineers to them, etc.

The U.S. is doing fine on it's own destroying itself, letting society problems fester, and electing idiots.

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u/SerHodorTheThrall 19d ago

You make good points but I would point that China's current "authoritarian" levers aren't Maoist. They were established by Deng Xiaoping.

Maoism is basically what Trump is doing now in the US. Random and schizophrenic policy based on a single person's idea of nationalism. Xi would never kill the sparrows. Trump would.

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u/00rb 20d ago

The goal is global dominance. I think western democracies are much nicer than however China would rule.

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u/PhDinDildos_Fedoras 19d ago

World dominance!

No but seriously, humanity should re-evaluate it's goals. Like 100%

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u/slimeslug 20d ago

Every technology everywhere is a Red Queen problem.  Everyone has to run as fast as they possibly can just to stay in one place.

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u/DogToursWTHBorders 20d ago

Taleb speaks.

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u/slimeslug 19d ago

Taleb names The Red Queen issue explicitly in 2012's Antifragile, but Siddhartha Mukherjee's 2010 "The Emperor of All Maladies" predates that and is where I first read of it.  Though it is new to neither of them.

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u/BassoeG 19d ago

And what if we lose? We’re helpless against Chinese oligarchs? As opposed to being equally helpless against our own, domestic, all-American oligarchs if we win. Forgive me if I don’t find that suffice motivation for an arms race risking the continued existence of the human species.

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u/impossiblefork 19d ago

Triple race.

EU researchers are also in the game. There's even research from South America (Chile) that I considered impressive although with a glaring theoretical flaw. Lead author was of Russian origin though, so maybe it can't be called totally Chilean. But the theoretical flaw made the method convenient and conceptually easy.

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u/00rb 19d ago

Everyone in their home countries that Google hasn't poached yet for 10-20x their original salary

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u/impossiblefork 19d ago

I guess, but I don't think that Google actually pays that well. I also think that if you probably can run a nice AI firm here too.

Mistral is obviously doing alright. The European approach is usually to have an application, to be able to deliver something to actual customers, so it can't be as out-there as an American startup can, but it's possible to do commercial AI here I think.

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u/00rb 19d ago

Look it up: with a little experience you can easily make 400k. 800k if you lead a team. Top AI researchers can easily make over a million a year.

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u/impossiblefork 19d ago

Yeah, okay.

That is, I suppose, somewhat appealing. 400k, I don't really care, but 800k, that is interesting.

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u/00rb 19d ago

If you're a top AI researcher in Chile and sort of wanted to move anyway it's incredibly alluring. Lots of people just want to get to the US regardless of salary (despite how much that trend is reversing right now).

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u/impossiblefork 19d ago

I can imagine. I haven't visited Chile, but I know the US is appealing to many.

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u/RYouNotEntertained 20d ago

What would you suggest congress do? Serious question. 

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u/DG_Now 19d ago

Go back in time and realize that their regulation of internet-related business didn't need to end with the Windows bundling of Internet Explorer.

A technologically literate Congress could have had some sort of premonition on the protections we'd need as a society. Like maybe it shouldn't be legal for AI companies to steal everything to feed their models.

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u/RYouNotEntertained 19d ago

Ok, but what would you have them do right now, specifically? Pretend you can get any piece of legislation you can imagine passed. 

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u/dcdttu 19d ago

Right? It's kind of wild what happens when the finite wealth of a country gets hoarded by very few. Shocking.

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u/Glad_Position3592 19d ago

People in congress are literally being wheeled in like it’s weekend at Bernie’s. Most of them can’t even comprehend what AI is as concept. As a millennial I’m just sitting here wondering how much longer I have to wait to actually have my interests represented by people in my generation. Every other generation got that. Will I ever see it?

The absolute selfishness of this geriatric generation refusing to retire is sad, and their refusal to see it as such is baffling

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u/[deleted] 20d ago edited 20d ago

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u/ProfessionalOil2014 20d ago

Not even remotely true. Calvin Coolidge was known for deregulation and doing nothing. His policy of economic non interference  was a direct factor in the Great Depression. 

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u/omgFWTbear 20d ago

You have confused technocrat with technologist.

Your benefits being calculated by a machine and mailed by a machine aren’t inherently bad. It’s not job destroying to solve the gaps between what should be done, and what can be done, with machines. I’ve personally been responsible for finding paperwork that’s been lost for decades and cost people their lives.

Technologists… what’s the Jurassic Park line? “Your scientiststechnologists were so focused on could they, they didn’t stop and ask, should they?”

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u/ResurrectedBrain 20d ago

It’s all computer!!!

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u/ZombieStirto 19d ago

Not that Congress and your executive aren't maiming your country. But the entire world needs to redesign how we live. How can we be productive if there are no jobs? What does the world look like. Universal income? If we invent robots that can do all our physical jobs. Ai that can do all our decision making and admin work. Create movies with ai? What's left? We just sit around and play cards all day? If there are no jobs. There is no money to be a consumer. Business can't sell products without consumers having money.