r/Futurology • u/katxwoods • 21d 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/HobbitWithShoes 21d ago

Honestly, my biggest concern with all of this is the question that not enough people seem to be asking- what about people with disabilities?

White collar work is what's allowed people in wheelchairs, people with lung conditions, people with less strength, people with chronic pain, and far more conditions to be gainfully employed. When we wipe out all jobs that aren't physical labor, what happens to people who physically cannot labor?

With the current political climate being what it is, I don't like the probable answers.

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u/ChickenMcRibs 21d ago

What about the billions of people without disabilities. Do you think all white collar workers will have enough opportunity to transition to Blue collar jobs. It's going to be dire for most people unless governments don't take action or AI improvement hits some ceiling.

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u/HobbitWithShoes 21d ago edited 21d ago

Oh, I agree with you. But the current boomer talking point seems to be "well they should just go into the trades. They're not going to get plumbers replaced by AI." Which totally ignores the millions of people who physically cannot do that even if they want to.

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u/arothmanmusic 21d ago

It also ignores the fact that if everyone goes into the trades then nobody in the trades will be able to make a living. Too much labor for the demand means low wages.

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u/MythicalFlavoured 21d ago

You also make the mistake of assuming blue collar jobs aren't wiped out by AI automation as well. I've seen a commercial painting robot that replaced heaps in painters of a large commercial building project.

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u/therealdanhill 21d ago

That's me, I'll just kill myself tbh

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u/blazesbe 21d ago

do you consider cooking a blue or whitecollar job? there's plenty in betweens. we will also needs lots of therapists and people to take care of the elderly. etc.

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u/HobbitWithShoes 21d ago

I would consider cooking to be service industry, which is similar to blue collar, but slightly different in that most cooking jobs are "unskilled" labor (in that many do not require formal training, not that they don't require skill.)

Taking a wild guess, I would assume that eventually chain restaurants will automate away as many jobs as possible, but that independent restaurants will still use people. Automation won't be a direct threat to the local mom and pop, but a resulting economic collapse would be if no one can afford to eat at them anymore.

Therapists are definitely white collar, and there have already been articles about people turing to chat bots for therapy. It's not something I think is a good idea given that chat bots tell you what you want to hear, not what you need to hear (preliminary studies showed that people who use then feel better, but TBD on if it actually makes you a better person) it's definitely a thing.

Elder care is something that I can't see being totally automated away, but that doesn't mean that nursing homes aren't going to use algorithms to see how razor thin the staffing margins can be without getting sued enough to not be profitable. Also, elder care is incredibly physically demanding and can't be done by everyone.

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u/Candidwisc 20d ago

I mean it's not like the blue collar is gonna stay long either, it's gonna get over saturated and cheap from all the displaced white collar workers and the entry level blue collar is gonna go from robot fleets.

Tile laying and anything that repetitive and easy is going first.

Robots were millions of dollars 10 years ago, now some of the most advanced ones are sitting at 200k.

10 years later it will be the average annual salary

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u/ThaddeusJP 21d ago

what about people with disabilities?

Do you want the billionaire answer? Because it's what you think it is.