In an interview with Axios today, Dario Amodei warns about the jobs that will be lost because of AI:
Amodei said AI companies and government need to stop “sugar-coating” what’s coming: the possible mass elimination of jobs across technology, finance, law, consulting and other white-collar professions, especially entry-level gigs.
Dario suggests a “token tax” on AI companies, including of course his own Anthropic, with the money getting redistributed somehow to offset job losses. Unfortunately the Trump administration is completely out to lunch on this. The tax cuts (and Medicaid restrictions) currently planned would go in the opposite direction.
I’ve been thinking lately about how Andrew Yang’s pitch for Universal Basic Income was a little too early. We’re going to need candidates in 2026 and 2028 who can speak about this.
While doing research for another blog post, I also found this older post from Sam Altman:
The default case for automation is to concentrate wealth (and therefore power) in a tiny number of hands. America has repeatedly found ways to challenge this sort of concentration, and we need to do so again.
Sam supported a study on UBI from 2020 to 2023. There are some findings here, although it was during COVID so employment was all out of whack anyway.
