The arrival of AI has sown the seed of uncertainty in many sectors putting on the table a question for which, today, no one has a clear answer: Is AI going to take our jobs or not?
The most curious thing is that not even those who are developing those models that would replace millions of employees they have a clear answer. Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, heads of OpenAI and Anthropic, have been offering two completely opposite visions for the same issue. After predicting a almost apocalyptic scenarioAltman now says everything will be fine. Amodei, for his part, warns of a very hard blow to employment. The data also does not shed light on the future employment of those who now must choose a career professional.
Altman says he was wrong (for the better). Sam Altman, the head of OpenAI, has greatly softened the defeatist speech he had been holding. A while ago I talked about entire job categories that were going to disappear. Now he says something else, although perhaps he does so more conditioned by the IPO of your company than for the certainty of a future with more jobs.
According to collected ReutersAltman is “I’m glad I was wrong about this; I thought the elimination of entry-level administrative jobs would have already had a bigger impact than it actually has.” This is a pretty big script twist coming from someone who has been setting the pace for the sector for years.
Amodei and Anthropic do not let up. At the other end of the narrative is Anthropic. Its co-founder, Chris Olah, repeated at a conference on ethics and AI in the vatican the same idea as his boss, Dario Amodei, has been defending for a long time. There is a real possibility that AI will replace human work on a large scale.
It does not speak of a smooth change or an easy transition. Talk about a serious, and sudden, impact. However, although both talk about the same type of technology and with similar data on the table, their interpretations of what is to come are clearly opposite.
Employees were an expense, but AI doesn’t come free. As leaders at major AI companies debate the future of the millions of employees they will replace with AI, companies are beginning to realize that AI It’s not going to be much cheaper either. than an employee. The companies that have opted the most for workforce cuts and increased use of AI are receiving your first billsand they scare. So they have put a stop to the so-called “tokenmaxxing“: pay without limit to use models without measuring the return well.
According to collected Business InsiderUber’s chief operating officer said AI costs are increasingly difficult to justify, just after its chief technology officer burned the annual AI budget early. According what was published by The VergeMicrosoft, also began reducing Claude Code licenses among its employees, a cut that Fortune linked to the high cost of massive use of these models.
More jobs for programmers and security teams. However, the implementation of AI in companies, far from eliminating jobs, is increasing the demand for certain profiles. According to data from the hiring platform Indeed collected by Axiosvacancies for software engineering positions have grown by 18% in the last year, while total employment falls by 4.3% in the same period.
Why is this happening? More code written with AI means more code that someone has to check. Companies continue hiring security analystsauditors and people who validate what the models generate. Automation detects failures at high speed, but prioritizing and fixing them still depends on human judgment. For now, that criterion remains scarceand expensive.
Generation Z is not trusting. Without a doubt, those most affected by all this uncertainty are the generation that has just entered the labor market. Without enough experience enough to face the new demands, but too advanced in their professional career to choose another career path. Given all this uncertainty and closed doorsGeneration Z no longer sees AI as an opportunity. He increasingly sees her as a direct threat to his first job, so he has chosen to fight it.
A survey According to Gallup, enthusiasm for AI among young people fell 14 points in just one year, and anger towards the technology rose to 31%. And they don’t stop complaining. a survey of Writer together with Workplace Intelligence, pointed out that 44% of Generation Z employees admit to actively sabotaging their company’s AI implementation plans, compared to 29% of the entire workforce.
With all this on the table, the only thing clear is that no one has the complete picture about the future of AI in the labor market. Neither those who sell the technology, nor those who use it, nor those who are about to look for their first job. Probably the answer is neither disaster nor total calm, but a little of each, distributed very unevenly depending on the sector and the country.
In Xataka | Technology workers have better salaries and an important “but”: more than half fear being replaced by AI
Image | Flickr (World Economic Forum/Pascal Bitz, Sandra Blaser), Unsplash (syful islam)
GIPHY App Key not set. Please check settings