The artificial intelligence revolution is no longer some distant sci-fi threat, it’s hitting the workforce far faster than most people realize and the economic surprise could be severe. Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic now valued at $183 billion, has issued one of the starkest warnings yet. Without intervention AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar roles and push unemployment to 10%–20% within the next one to five years.
“If we look at entry-level consultants, lawyers, financial professionals, you know, many of kind of the white collar service industries, a lot of what they do, you know, AI models are already quite good at,”
Amodei said in a recent interview.
“Without intervention, it’s hard to imagine that there won’t be some significant job impact there. And my worry is that it’ll be broad and it’ll be faster than what we’ve seen with previous technology.”
Inside Anthropic the shift is already happening at full speed. The company’s own AI system Claude is writing roughly 90% of Anthropic’s codebase and has begun not just assisting workers but replacing entire task chains outright. From customer service triage to the analysis of dense medical research Claude is eating into categories of white-collar work that once required degrees credentials and years of grinding experience.
The problem isn’t just capability, it’s velocity. Previous technological revolutions gave society decades to adjust while the AI wave is compressing that timeline into mere years. Amodei stresses that this acceleration is what separates AI from every past disruption.
“It is an experiment,”
he admitted.
“And one way to think about Anthropic is that it’s a little bit trying to put bumpers or guard rails on that experiment.”
He added
“We do know that this is coming incredibly quickly. And I think the worst version of outcomes would be we knew there was going to be this incredible transformation. And people didn’t have enough of an opportunity to adapt.”
The risk isn’t just mass layoffs, it’s the collapse of early-career roles that traditionally act as gateways into professional life. If junior positions vanish an entire generation may find itself locked out of upward mobility.
But while Amodei warns of an urgent need for intervention Congress still hasn’t passed a single law requiring AI safety testing or economic preparedness. Instead the country’s AI trajectory is being steered by a handful of executives, something Amodei himself acknowledges.
“No one. No one. Honestly, no one. And this is one reason why I’ve always advocated for responsible and thoughtful regulation of the technology.”
Yet the politics around Anthropic complicate the picture. The Trump administration has placed the company under growing scrutiny because of its early funding ties to Effective Altruism, a movement critics accuse of being a cult-like doomer-leaning ideology fixated on controlling AI and shaping the far future. Amodei insists neither he nor Anthropic identify with EA but the company’s origins trace back to EA-aligned megadonors like Sam Bankman-Fried and Dustin Moskovitz. FTX’s bankruptcy estate even offloaded its stake in Anthropic for $884 million with much of it ending up in the UAE, a history that has put the company squarely on Trumpworld’s radar.
Inside the administration officials view Anthropic as ideologically suspect, safety-heavy, Democrat-aligned, rooted in EA’s worldview and potentially trying to steer federal AI policy through its own philosophical lens rather than strict national interest. Anthropic claims it supports Trump’s AI priorities and is now courting the White House even pursuing federal contracts but skepticism remains.
That tension erupted into public view as the White House and Anthropic began openly clashing over regulatory strategy. The White House pushed for a decade-long freeze on state-level AI laws to avoid a messy patchwork while Anthropic opposed the freeze and later backed sweeping AI legislation in California. Trump’s AI czar David Sacks accuses the company of fear-driven regulatory capture, while Anthropic warns the administration that brushing off existential risks is reckless.
Both sides insist they want federal regulation but each is now accusing the other of hypocrisy.
Meanwhile Anthropic continues scaling its models at breakneck speed even as its CEO warns that the same technology could erase a generation of workers.
The window for action is closing fast. Whether the answer comes from government policy corporate restraint or entirely new safety nets the next few years will determine whether this transition becomes manageable or whether the U.S. drifts into a jobs crisis that reshapes the economy within half a decade.