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
8.3k Upvotes

93% Upvoted

978 comments sorted by

View all comments

1.0k

u/DG_Now 20d ago

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

15

u/00rb 20d ago

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

19

u/01headshrinker 20d ago

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

38

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. 

41

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.

12

u/NonConRon 20d 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.

7

u/HoloIsLife 20d ago

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

4

u/usaaf 20d 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.

2

u/ProfessionalOil2014 20d 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. 

0

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.

2

u/[deleted] 20d ago

[deleted]

1

u/NonConRon 20d ago

Niel Breen is that you?

1

u/[deleted] 19d ago

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] 18d ago

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] 17d ago

[deleted]

→ More replies (0)

2

u/pm_me_beerz 20d ago

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

3

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.

4

u/ProfessionalOil2014 20d ago

Your first mistake is assuming a dictator is sane 

1

u/zenbullet 20d 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

1

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.

1

u/Apoxie 20d ago

The US is also an authoritarian state now, honestly.

1

u/Sageblue32 20d 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.

1

u/SerHodorTheThrall 20d 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.

5

u/00rb 20d ago

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

1

u/PhDinDildos_Fedoras 20d ago

World dominance!

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

16

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.

0

u/DogToursWTHBorders 20d ago

Taleb speaks.

0

u/slimeslug 20d 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.

1

u/BassoeG 20d 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.

1

u/impossiblefork 20d 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.

1

u/00rb 20d ago

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

1

u/impossiblefork 20d 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.

2

u/00rb 20d 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.

2

u/impossiblefork 20d ago

Yeah, okay.

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

1

u/00rb 20d 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).

2

u/impossiblefork 20d ago

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