OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap doesn’t see “evidence” of AI decimating the white-collar entry-level job market.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei sparked debate last month with his dire prediction for such employees.
Lightcap said he hoped Amodei would take “an evidence-based approach” when making such predictions.
OpenAI doesn’t see the sky falling on the white-collar job market like its competitor Anthropic does.
“We’ve seen no evidence of this,” OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap said during a live taping of The New York Times’ “Hard Fork” podcast.
Lightcap was asked specifically about Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s recent prediction that artificial intelligence will wipe out 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs within the next five years.
“Dario is a scientist, and I would hope that he takes an evidence-based approach to these types of things,” Lightcap said.
OpenAI, Lightcap said, sees no evidence of impending doom for such employees.
“We work with every business under the sun,” he said. “We look at the problem and opportunity of deploying AI into every company on earth, and we have yet to see any evidence that people are kind of wholesale replacing entry-level jobs.”
Last month, Amodei told Axios he was making the prediction to motivate government and his competitors to prepare for what’s to come. A spokesperson for Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider
“Most of them are unaware that this is about to happen,” Amodei said. “It sounds crazy, and people just don’t believe it.”
Some executives, including the leaders of Shopify and Duolingo, have said they want managers to show that AI cannot fill new roles. Among the leading names in tech, there’s considerable debate about what the future will hold.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is also more optimistic that AI will reshape jobs, rather than take them. LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman thinks we’re underestimating AI’s impact even if it’s not a “bloodbath.”
Like Huang, Lightcap does see a major shift coming, but he believes society “can manage through it.”
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman echoed Lightcap, saying that history shows innovations like AI will lead to more job creation. Altman said the kind of immediate upheaval Amodei predicted isn’t realistic either.
“I think that is not how society really works,” said Altman, who joined Lightcap for the panel interview. “Even if the technology were ready for that, the inertia of society, which will be helpful in this case, there is a lot of mass there.”
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