Top technology leaders have differing views on whether AI will “take over” human jobs or create new jobs.
Since ChatGPT created a craze at the end of 2022, AI has crept into every aspect of life. Thanks to groundbreaking features, this technology helps many people handle work more easily, but also raises concerns about job “stealing”. Among technology leaders, opinions are also mixed.
Dario Amodei
Anthropic CEO, Dario Amodei. Image: TechXplore
Dario Amodei, CEO of AI startup Anthropic, repeatedly emphasized that AI will replace human jobs. In May, he warned that artificial intelligence could eliminate 50% of jobs for low-level office workers in the next five years.
“The first step to solving the problem is to be honest with people, that AI that replaces human jobs really does exist,” Amodei told Axios in September. “Exponential volatility makes things happen so fast, no one can be sure.”
According to him, the speed at which AI is developing and the way society applies technology makes it difficult to predict the timing of replacement, but the pressure is now great enough that he feels the need to warn the world.
Elon Musk
Billionaire Elon Musk in the Oval Office at the White House on May 30. Image: AP
Billionaire Elon Musk compared AI to a “supersonic tsunami” that could upset the labor market. In Joe Rogan’s podcast in November, he said that the demand for jobs when AI explodes is still very high, but many other jobs will also be replaced, with office jobs being in the first category. Activities that involve “physical movement”, such as farming, cooking… will be less affected.
Musk is also optimistic, even predicting humans will become rich thanks to AI, but warns there will be “trauma and disruption” on the transition path.
Jensen Huang
Jensen Huang, CEO Nvidia at Computex 2024 Exhibition in Taiwan, in June 2024. Image: Khuong Nha
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang once criticized Amodei’s stance on AI replacing humans. According to him, those who cannot use AI in the coming time will be the ones most likely to be robbed of their jobs.
“Companies that apply AI and robots first will succeed first. They will recruit more employees. You will lose your job, but not to AI or robots, but to people who are proficient in those technologies,” he said at an October event.
Jamie Dimon
Mr. Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan, May 2024. Image: Reuters
JPMorgan General Director Jamie Dimon assessed that AI helps shorten working time. He envisions people working 3.5 days a week in 20-40 years “and still having great lives.” Still, society needs to prepare for the transition period, as it could cause mass layoffs.
Sam Altman
Sam Altman, CEO OpenAI. Image: TechCrunch
“AI will certainly change a lot of jobs, even completely take away some jobs, but also create many new jobs,” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in the podcast The Circuit in May.
A month later, at the Snowflake Summit in San Francisco, Altman assessed that AI agents were acting like real subordinates, meaning many employees were at risk of being fired. He also envisions a world that combines AI and humanoid robots, even describing the scenario where humans could encounter “seven robots passing you” on the street. However, the world is currently “not ready” for humanoid robots.
Andy Jassy
Andy Jassy when he was head of Amazon Web Services. Image: Reuters
Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said AI is changing work processes at the company, meaning some jobs will be cut. “As we deploy generative AI and AI agents, the way work gets done changes,” he wrote on the Amazon blog. “We will need fewer people but still cover the full amount of work today.”
Last month, Amazon fired about 14,000 people, with one of the reasons being that AI “helps with rapid transformation”. According to Business Insiderthis is considered proof that artificial intelligence has begun to have a great impact on human work.
Yann LeCun
Professor Yann Lecun shares with students at the University of Natural Sciences, Hanoi National University, December 2024. Image: Luu Quy
In a LinkedIn post last month, Meta’s former chief AI scientist dismissed Amodei’s comments and agreed with Huang. Before that, he also had an optimistic view on AI. Speaking at Nvidia’s GTC conference in March, LeCun said AI could replace humans, but questioned whether humans would allow that to happen: “Fundamentally, our relationship with future AI systems, including superintelligence, is that we will be their bosses.”
Demis Hassabis
Demis Hassabis presented at the AlphaGo promotional event in Seoul, Korea in March 2016. Image: Reuters
Google DeepMind co-founder Demis Hassabis said in June that AI will create “very valuable jobs” and “empower” the technically savvy, as well as those at the forefront of using the technology. According to him, humans “have infinite adaptability”, so some work effects may occur, but not last long.
However, Hassabis advises young people to study STEM subjects because understanding the fundamentals is “very important”, especially in the fields of mathematics, physics and computer science to know “how these systems are put together”.
Geoffrey Hinton
Geoffrey Hinton at Google headquarters in Mountain View, California in 2015. Photo: AP
According to professor Geoffrey Hinton, one of the people known as the “godfather of AI”, people in the age of artificial intelligence need to be “very skilled” to be able to get a job not related to AI. “For routine mental labor, AI will replace everything,” he shared on the podcast Diary of a CEO in June. “So becoming a plumber is probably a good choice.”