Software jobs as we know them may soon cease to exist, says Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei

A year after Dario Amodei warned that rapid advances in artificial intelligence could trigger a serious employment crisis, the Anthropic CEO has a more prescient prediction, this time for the larger software industry.

Inside an interview with Wall StreetJournal Amodei Editor-in-Chief Emma Tucker said the software will become cheaper in the future, “perhaps essentially free.”

As AI tools become increasingly capable of writing code, Amodei suggested there will be a fundamental shift in how software is created and paid for.

Software Economics

“The assumption that you have to amortize a piece of software that you build for millions of users can start to be wrong,” he said in the interview.

In other words, this means that the upfront cost of building software is falling so fast that millions of users are no longer needed to justify building it.

Thanks to artificial intelligence, the time and financial cost required to create a functional piece of software is shrinking from months and millions of dollars to hours and pennies.

“There are a lot of jobs, a lot of careers that we’ve built over decades that may not exist,” Amoidei told Tucker.

He said he believes society can adapt to these changing trends, but there is not much awareness of the magnitude and pace of change.

Serious employment crisis

one year ago in an interview with Fox NewsAnthropic’s CEO had warned that the pace of advancement of artificial intelligence could lead to a serious employment crisis, especially for entry-level white-collar workers.

Since then, the world has seen thousands of layoffs linked to AI-driven productivity, especially in the tech sector and including at Big Tech firms like Meta.

At the time, Amodei said the technology had advanced dramatically in just two years. “Two years ago he was at the level of a smart high school student; now he’s probably reaching the level of a smart college student and beyond that,” he said during the interview.

He noted that artificial intelligence could disrupt employment in sectors that are largely dependent on analytical and administrative work.

“Things like summarizing a document, brainstorming, preparing a financial report, etc. worry me a lot; entry-level jobs in fields like finance, consulting, technology, and many other such fields are entry-level white-collar jobs.

“I worry that these will first be increased and soon replaced by artificial intelligence systems. It is difficult to predict the future, but we may indeed be facing a serious employment crisis,” Amodei claimed.

He argued that while the growth of AI cannot realistically be stopped, governments and companies have the opportunity to shape how AI will impact workers and economies.

Amodei said employee adaptation and public policy will play crucial roles. In one of his most striking remarks, Amodei suggested that taxing artificial intelligence companies, including his own, may eventually become necessary.