Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei Says AI Could Increase Both Economic Growth and Unemployment

Artificial intelligence (AI) could create a never-before-seen scenario in which both GDP growth and the unemployment rate are very high, creating greater inequality, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said Tuesday (Jan. 20).

Interviewed by the Wall Street Journal at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Amodei said that these trends are “the signature of this technology.”

“Now, that’s not a combination we’ve almost ever seen before, right? You think of high GDP growth, that’s lots of stuff to do, lots of jobs for everyone. It’s always been like that in the past. We’ve never had a technology that’s this disruptive,” Amodei said in comments shared by the WSJ in a video clip accompanying a report of the interview.

It’s possible that there could be GDP growth of 5% to 10% together with an unemployment rate of 10%, Amodei said. He added that “it’s just never happened that way before.”

Amodei also said during the interview, per the WSJ report, that these trends could create a “nightmare” scenario in which 10 million people in the United States, with 7 million of them being in Silicon Valley, would gain as much as 50% GDP growth, with the rest of the country left behind.

He also said, per the report, that government should play a role in managing the job displacement that could be caused by AI and “making sure that everyone gets a part of that growth.”

When outplacement and executive coaching company Challenger, Gray & Christmas announced in November that there were more layoffs in October than there had been in that month since 2003, the firm attributed the layoffs in part to AI adoption.

The company said October 2003 saw a surge of layoffs that was caused in part by the impact the growing popularity of cell phones had on the telecommunications industry.

“Like in 2003, a disruptive technology is changing the landscape,” Andy Challenger, workplace expert and chief revenue officer at Challenger, Gray & Christmas, said in a November press release.

It was reported in August that young workers were finding it harder to land jobs in fields where generative AI tools can automate jobs previously done by humans.