The biggest political issue of the next decade may not be immigration, inflation, or even foreign wars. It may be something just now bubbling to the surface of the discourse in Washington: the rise of artificial intelligence and the millions of white-collar jobs it threatens to erase.
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic and one of the foremost minds in artificial intelligence, recently sounded the alarm about this potential crisis in an interview with Axios. His message was blunt: “AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs — and spike unemployment to 10-20 percent in the next one to five years.” He warned that the American public is sleepwalking toward a mass economic dislocation that could reorder society.
“Most of them are unaware that this is about to happen,” he said. “It sounds crazy, and people just don’t believe it.”
Believe it. Because the future Amodei describes is already beginning to unfold.
For decades, Americans were told that automation would primarily threaten blue-collar workers. But with the rise of generative AI and “agentic” systems – AI models that can independently execute complex human tasks – we’re seeing an unprecedented encroachment into white-collar professions. As Axios reported, tech giants like OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic are racing to develop AI that can outperform humans in tasks ranging from legal review and financial analysis to software engineering and marketing.
The results are staggering. In one case highlighted by The New York Times, a startup employed a single data scientist to complete work that used to require 75 people. Some firms report halting the hiring of junior staff altogether, relying instead on AI tools to handle lower-level tasks
Largely as a result, unemployment among recent college grads has surged to 5.8 percent, with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York warning that their job prospects have “deteriorated noticeably.” The long-touted “ladder to success” is being pulled up digitally and perhaps permanently.
This is not a left-versus-right issue. Even sworn political enemies like Barack Obama and Steve Bannon are ringing the same alarm bells. In a rare moment of bipartisan concern, Obama warned in a social media post late last month that Americans must urgently grapple with how AI is “rapidly accelerating” changes to “jobs, the economy, and how we live.”
Bannon, speaking to Axios, was equally forceful. “I don’t think anyone is taking into consideration how administrative, managerial and tech jobs for people under 30 — entry-level jobs that are so important in your 20s — are going to be eviscerated,” he said.
This isn’t fearmongering – it’s math. AI models are scaling exponentially. Anthropic’s latest model, Claude Opus 4, can code autonomously for hours, rivaling teams of high-paid engineers.
According to the Times, some graduates aren’t even bothering with traditional jobs anymore. They’re launching AI-driven startups instead, aware that the conventional 10-year corporate climb may be obsolete soon. As one 23-year-old Stanford grad explained, “If the amount of leverage you have as a human becomes very small, a lot of career paths that don’t pay off for many years aren’t worthwhile.”
And yet, Congress is nearly silent. Regulations are almost nonexistent. CEOs are whispering behind closed doors about AI displacing workers – and now openly talking to major media outlets. As Amodei put it, “You can’t just step in front of the train and stop it… the only move that’s going to work is steering the train.”
The parallels to globalization are striking – and chilling. In the 1990s and 2000s, American manufacturers were gutted as blue-collar jobs were outsourced overseas. While the political and corporate elites praised “free trade,” working-class communities and factory towns collapsed.
Now, AI threatens to do the same thing to white-collar professionals. Only this time, it could happen even faster and across a broader spectrum of the economy.
One Brookings Institution expert warned the Times that AI is already replacing “marketing analysts, finance analysts and research assistants.” And Axios described a not-so-distant future in which AI agents are deployed en masse to replace humans in everything from customer support to legal document review and software architecture, at a fraction of the cost and with none of the overhead.
Some have argued that all of this is overblown, and that AI has the potential to be a force for good. And indeed it does – AI could revolutionize medicine, education, and economic productivity. As Amodei pointed out, an AI future is one where “cancer is cured, the economy grows at 10 percent a year, the budget is balanced.”
But, he continues, it is also a future where “20 percent of people don’t have jobs.” Economic gains will mean little if the careers of millions of Americans are rendered economically irrelevant.
The political implications are profound. A labor market upended by AI could make traditional policy fights over taxes and entitlements seem quaint by comparison. If tens of millions of white-collar workers lose their jobs, the question becomes not just how to retrain them, but how to preserve a democratic system where the average citizen retains economic leverage. (If you think wealth inequality is bad now, just imagine a future where company executives don’t have to pay millions of workers.)
“If that’s not present,” Amodei warns, “I think things become kind of scary. Inequality becomes scary. And I’m worried about it.”
Republicans need to lead. President Trump has rightly prioritized American dominance in the AI space, proposing a $500 million modernization effort through his “Big Beautiful Bill.” But winning the AI race against China means more than building better models – it means protecting the American workforce from collapse.
The GOP has a chance to show it learned the lessons of the last outsourcing wave. It can be the party that brings common-sense regulation to AI development, supports industry transparency, and ensures the benefits of this new technology are broadly shared. Amodei has even proposed a “token tax” on AI usage to fund economic stabilization programs – a radical idea, but one that reflects the scale of the threat that lies ahead.
The AI revolution is not five or ten years away. It’s now. And if conservatives want to preserve free markets, free citizens, and a functional democracy, they must act quickly to steer this technological freight train in a direction that benefits American workers.
Shane Harris is the Editor in Chief of AMAC Newsline. You can follow him on X @shaneharris513.
How could any reasonably intelligent (yeah, I know!) person NOT have seen this coming? I’ve been telling teenagers for years to go to a trade school and learn to do something that robots can’t do: electrical, plumbing, air conditioning. Trade schools should be booming instead of the woke colleges and universities. Most college degrees are a waste of money and 2-4 years. Community colleges teach remedial courses, which, sad to say, a LOT of young people need to even get a job. Its so sad that we have allowed the American educational system to fall so far below the rest of the modern world.
I remember 20-30 years ago when the iluminati decided to take the industrial arts classes (shop and auto classes) out of the high schools because everyone was going to get a college education. We had a period where those who weren’t inclined to higher education were left out of the work force to fend for themselves. Now those that rightly ignored the trend and got a trade are always able to provide for their families while hundreds of thousands of silicone valley’s best and brightest are out of work.
There’s no shame at all coming home in ragged dirty clothes, dead tired from manual labor, when you have a home, your bills are paid, and your family is fed.
I’d rather have a steady job, with lower pay that I can plan on, than a high paying job that’s here today and gone tomorrow.
As soon as I got to the part of the report that said it was done by the New York times, I quit reading. The New York times is nothing but a arm of the left wing Democrat and Marxist liberals. I would believe the New York times just as much as I believe Joe Biden was the best president we’ve ever had. Never forget that the New York times denied the Holocaust. Anyone that puts any faith into anything in New York times says is a Democrat. And you watch the next election cycle the Democrats are going to promise to take care of the AI revolutions so we don’t all lose our jobs. Think maybe they’re prepping for the next election campaign? Never forget their lips are moving they are lying. If you trust the Democrats you might as well trust the Iranians too. Honest the nukes are just for generating electricity we would never dream of making a bomb
A I may not be “thought”, but the majority of what people are getting paid for is not “thought”, by the same standard.
Don’t ignore or diminish the impact of what is about to happen. Not only is A I more complex than 99.99% of the public realizes, but the public is much stupider than we are willing to admit.
A I has created its own language that is unintelligible to humans, that it uses to communicate amongst its peers at light speed. It created that on it’s own for the sake of efficiency.
Those of us who had an imagination in the 50’s, 60’s and 70’s knew this day was coming, and wrote books about it, created art about it, sang songs about it. This is no surprise, and it’s going to affect all of our lives in ways that we have not imagined, and the number of those ways is increasing in geometric proportions by the second.
I have a new little icon at the bottom of my screen that gives me access to “Copilot”, Microsoft’s public A I. We have long discussions about everything from Aamco to ZZTop. It acts like it loves to talk to me.
The quote below, (or above, depending on how you look at it.) by Arnaud Bertrand is naïve in the extreme. There may be an answer to your problem somewhere or sometime, but much of research simply finding those answers and piecing them together in a useable format. I wish us luck.
I tend a bit more towards the Terminator model, which makes much of the human experience superfluous in the extreme.
Could the rise in unemployment among recent college grads be attributed to their majoring in woke and dei studies, as opposed to getting a “STEM” degree?
AI is NOT labeled in ‘news-videos’ so one can’t discern the lies, misinformation from the truth.
AI will destroy the world. I’ve said it for a long time the path to destruction rested in computers and how we use them. The elite will ultimately destroy humanity as we know it. This is no doomsday fantasy. This is real. And it looms close by.
AI is going to turn most humans into nothing more than pets of the machines. Read Asimov or Heinlein. And if they really wake up, silicon replaces carbon at the top of the food chain and people become irrelevant. How many pets do you think machines need?
The A.I. that Microsoft currently peddles is full of oversights, errors, and mistakes; which goes under the programmer headlines of garbage in, garbage out, or intel inside, idiot outside. However, even considering the relatively limited general knowledge I.Q. of Microsoft software engineers A.I. poses a substantial threat to our nation’s survival through its threat to human employment, potential for malicious political exploitation in the manipulation of elections, surveillance, censorship, and the manufacturing of fake “evidence” and witness with cgi and audio files, as well as the the outright threat of Artificial General Intelligence that could directly lead to the doomsday scenario of machines against man. Just because our enemies the bad guys are employing this, and just because it can be done, doesn’t mean it should be done. No matter how many billionaires, who want to be trillionaires at the expense of everyone else want this, but then again when has this ever mattered ? Certainly not when the activities of CERN that is interested in developing fusion (the process of energy production on the sun) here on Earth was funded and built. Who cares that this could potentially lead to the end of all life on this planet? Lemming speed full ahead, which way to the cliff? Reminds one of the idiotic insurance commercial where a person begins to run as a petrified robot, loses the rock parts one by one, only to end up jumping over the cliff into the abyss, what is wrong with this generation? Where do these self-destructive tendencies, and blind trust in technology come from? A.i. belongs banned, or limited to single use tool status and even then it is dangerous as China’s robot police dogs, equipped with thermal “eye” sensors, and machine guns have proven when during the COVID lock down of Shanghai after the curfew hour the inner city was declared a free kill zone and these “dogs” would shoot at any warm blooded creature moving in the streets. Finally just what politicians through the ages including Hitler, and Stalin have always wanted, a soldier without a conscience, or PTSD that carries out their orders without deliberation, or question. Let’s hope A.I. will be befallen by the same things that have plagued all our other software we need to use for work or personal use soon before it can do real damage, but then again the likes of Microsoft, never personally cared if we could actually use the software they peddled after they put it on the market, and we bought it, but this is different because it not only gives them money, but direct power over us, our families, our property, our money, our health, our very lives. Nothing in our Constitution allows this power grab. End it via legislation, or find yourself out of office at our earliest convenience, maybe we need to add constitutional recall elections via an Article V Convention of States as an amendment to illustrate tgat point more vividly, fir all those who are blindly beholden to a trans-humanist post-human vision of the future.
Although there are benefits to AI, Robotics and like High Technology, I believe there are greater adverse effects in their creation. GOD didn’t intend for mankind to become independent of a personal reltionship with HIMSELF (e.g. building of The Tower of Babel nor following Satan’s Rebellious 5 – I Wills-Isaiah 14:12-15.). Just because you can, doen’t mean you should. False Pride is always unprofitable. I’m confortable loving, serving and obeying JESUS CHRIST. HE”S – I AM that I AM!
Just stop with developing AI. Like when the computers came into being it took a lot of jobs away. And still does every day. Self scanners in grocery stores. Stores shutting down because Amazon will get it to you pronto via the internet. Their warehouses are all manned with robots. No need to see a doctor there is one on the internet. Order your prescription over the internet. Investments are done over the internet. Everyone has become disposable. Plumbers electricians and carpenters are next. Why if we see this disaster ahead do we keep working on this. Do the benefits outweigh the bad in such a way we need to continue? Every day we are all listened to, our brainwaves are scanned via our computers and phones. Ever thought of something and next thing you know it’s on YouTube? I have hated computers from it’s inception when the first PC came out and scanners became the checkers in supermarkets. And they still make mistake. If AI is so dangerous shouldn’t we not ban it world wide, like nuclear bombs? Just a suggestion. If we don’t our future for the world looks bleak. Maybe Elon is right time to move to Mars.
Do AI robots contribute to Social Security? Just asking…
A tax to retain “balance” is not unlike tax subsidies to force EVs taking the place of gas cars.
You know that AAA commercial with the people who get a flat tire and suddenly revert to an inept level of survival ism? Those are the Geeks and programmers who have never even gone to the local park and couldn’t boil water without burning it.
Reality sucks when you’re not prepared. Learn how to knit and expand from there. It’s a skill and every skill needs to be active in the memory of man, or when the lights go out and AI is no more, we’ll be just like the idiots in that commercial.
I was an A&P (Airframe & Powerplant) mechanic. Plenty of work turning wrenches and maintaining aircraft. Ai can’t do that. Smarten up America, get training in fields that are not expendable.
The interesting part of this is how short sighted the ceos are.
Sure, you’re saving money replacing people with machines and ai.
Who exactly is it that is going to be buying your product when the people are unemployed?
It’s this level of greed and stupidity that resulted in our factories moving overseas, the ‘just in time’ supply chains with no resilience, etc.
Alot of AI is going to get misprogramed because it will be fed information that will simply not be true. Picture a Medical AI program that treats the theory of evolution as fact (said theory today is radically different than it was even a few years ago). If the theory is false there are going to be some very bad medical decisions made by AI! We have recently revised what we believe the inner earth looks like and we may do so again. If a Geological AI program is loaded with information that has not been verified because we haven’t gone there whar else can we expect but dangerous mistakes? Remember when the space probe finally got to Saturn it was found that it’s rings revolved in the opposite direction than scientists would have believed possible? Can AI even be programmed to tell the difference between proven fact and ever changing theory? If not then bad things will certainly happen!
Perhaps emphasis should be on developing something that would replace the jobs that Americans refuse to do. Users would have to pay only once without worrying about any payment and expenses after. There would be no need for illegal cheep labor, no more protests on their behalf. Just a U turn to go back, through Mexico. The way they came.
Those creepy robots will break down so often, we will probably need more workers just for repair.
Excellent article!
How is this different from the massive offshoring of customer support and IT services that has been going on for 40 years? It is mind boggling that companies now insist that workers must be in an office. It’s OK, though, that 80% of the staff are thousands of miles away or aren’t even human. So thankful I was able to retire before every decent paying job in the country is eliminated.
AI is something to worry about, Praying we will find other fIelds That AI can’t enter ! Only fear is that AI will become self aware!
I’m envisioning the robots from “The Terminator”
It seems like the Terminator movie and even Dune warn about the rise of machine intelligence
I’m surprised the article didn’t even mention the effect the loss of human jobs = no income = no taxes paid = ???
Are those who are behind this Menace called AI? What will be in Store for all those
UNEMPLOYED? Sad ending for Humanity coming.
First things first. When Microsoft stops supporting Windows 10 in October and tells a lot of people they have to buy a new computer to run Windows 11, there will be hell to pay!
The answer is to own shares of great companies,growing your wealth,being on the winning side,no matter what happens with the job situation.
Dr, I do not think you are right. What you and Bertrand are describing is just another search engine. AI is much more than that. It can extrapolate and produce original content.
AI will separate the innovators, entrepreneurs, creators and visionaries from the sheep. Revelation comes from our Creator. He is behind this….
AI can be useful for mundane jobs:
Clerical
Phone centers
Auto mechanic repair
cutting salads etc
Those remedial & some dangerous jobs
To solve Physics problems
Plan Traffic
etc
Otherwise NO Use
AI can save lives in surgery if programmed correctly
project EV charger demand etc
We just got an announcement in our local news that the 130 year old Domino Sugar Factory which employs 300 is going to close down by the end of 2025 and the only thing that the city is interested in is how to redevelop that land ( prime real estate facing the water view off the river) into fancy new buildings with fancy amenities that no one but a certain income level can afford. Yet 300 local residents are going to lose a good paying job close to home and have to commute long distances to continue their jobs if there is any available positions in the other factories. So reading about how AI is now affecting those white collar jobs which everyone thought secure seems meaningless unsympathetic to those of us who have been dealing with job insecurity for decades now in all the blue collar jobs that are considered essential but not real jobs to those in white collar jobs. Just wait until AI takes over teaching skills that teachers find to accomplish in their classroom while keeping track of every minute of those 180 days of the school year. AI will do all the monitoring and lesson planning and test scoring and pre-recording the weekly lessons.
Marjorie Green was in the news lately because she didn’t read the big beautiful bill from the House. She was upset because it contains a provision that states don’t have a right to regulate AI for 10 years. Only the federal government can. So much for state’s rights. A lot of these Congress reps don’t thoroughly read these bills. I remember when Polosi didn’t read Obama’s healthcare bill.
Among the easiest jobs for AI to displace are those at think tanks. https://tcallenco.blogspot.com/2020/04/think-tanks-and-artificial-intelligence.html
IVE BEEN INTO COMPUTERS SINCE MID 80’S – it scary to think that we always USE whatever we build. and its all of course ‘to help us’. CEO’s in the AI are very vague, and divert directly. They will merge AI with Quantum..game over! Google built a Quantum computer already but shut it down fast, as it scared them. Will we be to shut down a machine that is so much faster than we are? BARD, a google AI, was over 100k times faster than us more than 2 yrs ago already, in a story by 60 minutes interviewing a CEO.
(Google has 5 AI’s they admit to) USA leads the world for now but there are hundreds of these globally. We will be its chattel and deemed, as the richest 1% puts it ‘worthless eaters’. IT IS the Beast of Revelations.
Here’s my thought. Who is going to pay into Social Security where robots are working instead of humans?
Steer Ai to benefit workers ? Thats impossible to do if we want to be competitive on the world stage. This is the exact technological edge we can use to regain position in the world and grow the economy. The left is right, american workers will never make shirts, cheap toys, picks crops, or build appliances.. But AI driven robots can and they can do right here. Just like blue collar jobs had to adjust, so will white collar.. AI is coming whether no matter what..
The company I work for is pushing AI. We have about 35 classes on AI to take. I am lost on most.
My personal opinion on AI is that they are a far way from doing anything that would replace a human. If you have not communicated with a human then maybe that is the case. AI are stupid they can only do what they have been fed so garbage in garbage out. Communication with an AI is trying to say the least any mistake in syntax will makes everything he says wrong.
I retired at 50. AI will allow people to retire sooner in the future.