Why are we pretending AI is going to take all the jobs? (opens in new tab)

> Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, whose company has absorbed a bunch of ex-Biden staff, says one scenario is that most entry-level white collar jobs disappear. "Cancer is cured, the economy grows at 10% a year, the budget is balanced,” he said, “and 20% of people don't have jobs."

I could imagine AI taking a lot of peoples' jobs. Two problems with this statement, though:

(1) If AI replaces all of the entry level jobs, but does them badly—like it does—then how will that help the economy grow 10% a year? Is the biggest drain on the economy having to pay entry level white collar workers?

(2) If AI does replace all of the entry level white collar workers because it's cheaper, then why would it continue to be cheaper? Even if AI did those jobs as well as actual humans—which it won't—it only has to be slightly cheaper, and the AI companies who spend billions developing their models, and the chip designers who power those models, will just raise prices as much as they can. After that, it won't even be cheaper, not really.

So... where's the gain?

All that's to say that, I agree with the author of this article. AI isn't going to take all of the jobs—or if it does, the economy won't grow because of it.