Dario Amodei warns that AI could cause ‘extraordinary and painful’ disruption to employment

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has issued a new warning about how AI will disrupt the job market, saying it will be an “unusually painful” disruption.

The AI ​​chief, who co-founded Anthropic with his sister Daniela Amodei in 2021 and helped develop the AI ​​chatbot Claude, warned last year that AI would disrupt half of white-collar jobs. Leaders in the business and technology worlds are divided on this issue. Mr. Amodei’s warning triggered the Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang said, “I think AI is very scary, but only (Anthropic) should do it.”

Amodei published a nearly 20,000-word essay on Monday, arguing that the risks posed by AI are not being taken seriously and warning that the technology will cause an ever-greater “shock” to the job market.

Amodei listed what he sees as the potential harms of artificial intelligence, including AI becoming autonomous and unpredictable, bad actors and terrorist groups using it to manufacture biological weapons, and some countries exploiting it to gain disproportionate power and create “global totalitarian dictatorships.”

“Humanity is on the verge of gaining almost unimaginable power, but it is highly uncertain whether our social, political, and technological systems are mature enough to wield it,” Amodei wrote.

In his essay, he elaborated on his argument that it will be difficult for humans to recover from AI’s impact on the labor market in the short term.

“While new technologies often create shocks in the labor market, and humans have always recovered from those shocks, I am concerned because these past shocks only affect a small portion of the total human capacity, leaving room for humans to expand into new tasks,” Amodei said.

“I’m worried that because the impact of AI will be more widespread and happen more quickly, it will be more difficult to get things done,” he added.

Amodei predicted that humans would be unable to adapt to the rapid development of AI, causing an “unusually painful” short-term shock in the labor market.

“The pace of advancement in AI is far faster than previous technological revolutions,” he wrote. “It is difficult for people to adapt to this pace of change, both in terms of changes in the way certain jobs work and the need to switch to new jobs.”

He said this is primarily because AI’s “cognitive breadth” means that rather than impacting specific industries, AI could eliminate jobs across finance, consulting, law and technology at the same time, denying workers the option of “switching lanes” to another industry where their skill set matches.

“Rather than replacing a single job, this technology functions as a ‘general workforce replacement for humans,'” Amodei wrote.

Addressing the problem will require “government intervention,” Amodei said, including a “progressive tax” specifically targeting AI companies.

Job destruction due to AI has dominated the headlines over the past year. The technology is cited as a reason for about 55,000 U.S. layoffs in 2025, according to December data from consulting firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas.

A study published in November by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology found that AI could already fill 11.7% of jobs in the U.S. labor market and save up to $1.2 trillion in wages across finance, health care, and other professional services.

Consulting firm Mercer’s Global Talent Trends 2026 report surveyed 12,000 people around the world and found that 40% of employees fear losing their jobs to AI, up from 28% in 2024.

But Deutsche Bank analysts said in a note last week that while major companies blame AI technology for layoffs, there’s actually something else at play: “AI redundancy cleaning will be a key feature in 2026.”

Yale University’s Budget Lab said in an October report that AI has not yet caused widespread job losses, according to an analysis of U.S. labor market data from 2022 to 2025. The researchers found that the proportion of workers in various occupations hasn’t changed significantly since ChatGPT debuted in November, sparking interest in AI.

Some see jobs being created in blue-collar industries, for example. Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang said AI will actually “create a lot of jobs” for plumbers, electricians, construction workers and people who are building AI-related factories.

“And we’re talking about six-figure salaries for people who are building chip factories or computer factories or AI factories,” he added.

JP Morgan’s CEO Jamie Dimon echoed this sentiment at last week’s World Economic Forum, saying governments need to intervene at the “local level” and provide incentives for companies to retrain talent and provide income support as AI takes some jobs.