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Who's afraid of the jobs apocalypse now?

Tech CEOs are softening their predictions about AI replacing workers, but economists are growing more concerned

Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

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For the past year, the loudest warnings about AI destroying jobs came from the people building AI.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei predicted in May 2025 that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs within five years and push unemployment as high as 20%. The same month, Mark Zuckerberg said AI could soon do the work of midlevel engineers. In July, Ford $F 2.00%'s Jim Farley predicted the technology would replace "literally half of all white-collar workers" in the U.S. Amazon $AMZN -0.98% told employees to expect a smaller corporate workforce, full stop.

Economists mostly rolled their eyes. The evidence that AI was actually behind layoffs was thin, they pointed out, and executives had every incentive to blame a shiny new technology for cuts they wanted to make anyway.

Now the two camps have traded places.

Tech leaders have spent the past few months walking their doomsaying back. Sam Altman now says the industry........

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