Adrian Weckler: Will AI kill entry-level white-collar jobs? Watch the recruitment ads for clues
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the technology could cause a 20pc unemployment rate and wipe out many white-collar roles but others call these predictions alarmist
Today at 21:30
One of the most persistent fears about AI is that it will take our jobs. But up until now, that has mostly been articulated by institutions paid to produce future-of-work reports, or alarmists such as Elon Musk.
Last week, it came directly from the boss of one of the big three AI companies. Dario Amodei, chief executive and co-founder of Anthropic, which barely trails OpenAI and Google Gemini, said that AI was on course to eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs, leading to a rise in general unemployment up to 20pc.
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Irish Times
an hour ago
- Irish Times
Trump warns Musk of ‘very serious consequences' if he backs Democrats
Donald Trump warned Elon Musk that he faces 'very serious consequences' if he funds Democratic candidates following the pair's epic public bust-up this week. The warning, delivered in an interview with NBC News set to broadcast on Sunday, follows days of feuding and threats after Musk called Republicans' budget legislation an 'abomination'. Mr Trump told interviewer Kristen Welker his relationship with the tech mogul was over and warned Mr Musk against choosing to fund Democrats after spending close to $300 million (€355 million) in support of Mr Trump's re-election last year. 'If he does, he'll have to pay the consequences for that,' Trump told NBC News. 'He'll have to pay very serious consequences if he does that,' he said. READ MORE [ Keith Duggan: Bromance descends into jaw-dropping feud Opens in new window ] Mr Trump was also asked if he had any wish to repair his relationship with Musk. 'No,' he said. Asked if he thought their relationship was over, he said, 'I would assume so, yeah,' and had no plans to speak with his erstwhile sidekick. 'I'm too busy doing other things,' Mr Trump said. 'I have no intention of speaking to him.' Elon Musk with President Donald Trump during a joint news conference in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, in May. Photograph: Haiyun Jiang/The New York Times But he predicted that the spat had helped to unify the Republican Party around him, saying the 'party has never been united like this before. It's never been. It's actually more so than it was three days ago.' Mr Musk's opposition to the Republican budget bill, formally the 'one big beautiful bill act', would not, he predicted affect its passage through Congress. The bill narrowly passed the House and is now under consideration in the Senate. However, some conservative Republicans share Musk's concerns about the need for significant spending cuts and are considering making changes. The bill extends Trump's 2017 tax cuts and includes new spending for border security and the military. Republicans aimed to offset these costs with cuts to programmes such as Medicaid, food stamps and green-energy tax credits. Projections from the Congressional Budget Office and independent analysts indicate that the bill would add between $2.3tn and $5tn to the deficit over the next 10 years. White House officials contend that the economic growth generated by tax cuts will offset the increased spending. [ How Trump spat threatens Elon Musk's business empire: 'Nobody on the right or left is gonna buy a Tesla' Opens in new window ] Still, Mr Trump told NBC he is 'very confident' that the bill will pass the Senate before July 4th. 'I think, actually, Elon brought out the strengths of the bill because people that weren't as focused started focusing on it, and they see how good it is,' Mr Trump said. 'So in that sense, there was a big favour. But I think Elon, really, I think it's a shame that he's so depressed and so heartbroken.' And he accused Mr Musk of being 'disrespectful to the office of the president'. 'I think it's a very bad thing, because he's very disrespectful. You could not disrespect the office of the president,' he said. Earlier, Musk deleted a post from X, the social media platform he owns, that asserted links between Trump and disgraced US financier Jeffrey Epstein . Probed on the inflammatory post, Mr Trump said: 'That's called 'old news', that's been old news, that has been talked about for years. Even Epstein's lawyer said I had nothing to do with it. It's old news.' Musk has also retracted a threat to begin 'decommissioning' SpaceX's Dragon spacecraft used by Nasa to ferry astronauts and supplies to the International Space Station. That came after Mr Trump suggested he might cancel SpaceX's federal contracts. On Saturday, the president said he hadn't given the subject any more thought. 'I'd be allowed to do that,' he said, 'but I haven't given it any thought.' Earlier on Saturday, JD Vance told interviewer and comedian Theo Von that Mr Musk was making a 'huge mistake' going after Mr Trump, but downplayed Mr Musk's attacks as being made by an 'emotional guy' who got frustrated.' I hope that eventually Elon comes back into the fold. Maybe that's not possible now because he's gone so nuclear,' the vice-president said. But he reasoned: 'Look, it happens to everybody. I've flown off the handle way worse than Elon Musk did in the last 24 hours.' 'I actually think if Elon chilled out a little bit, everything would be fine,' Vance said. – Guardian
RTÉ News
14 hours ago
- RTÉ News
It's been one big beautiful bust-up for Trump and Musk
There were many tensions in the relationship between Elon Musk and Donald Trump. Some had been clearly visible; others were well concealed. Their relationship was widely considered the most consequential in current US politics. The proximate cause of its end was the bill that will probably be Donald Trump's most consequential piece of legislation. The one big beautiful bill has caused one big beautiful bust-up. The United States has a budget problem, and a big one. Simply put, the US government spends more than it takes in taxes and uses borrowings to cover the gap. The borrowings have mounted up over the decades and now stand just north of $36 trillion. Elon Musk was touted (mostly by himself) as the man who was going to fix it. During the election campaign last year it was Musk who first raised the idea of a "Department of Government Efficiency" (DOGE) in a podcast he did with candidate Trump in the middle of August. Musk said he would be willing to serve in the administration, leading DOGE. Because he was - and remains - very worried about the Federal debt and is convinced of the urgent need to reduce it. The DOGE plan was to use the techniques of Silicon Valley start-ups on the fusty world of government accounting and slash and burn its way quickly to big savings that would help to close out the tax and spend gap. Cutting the deficit was the strategic goal, and Trump campaigned on the idea. As long as lenders - foreign and domestic - are happy to lend money to the US government for an interest rate it can afford, and the economy is growing fast enough, borrowing to make up a shortfall for a few years shouldn't be a problem. And the US market for government bonds is the world's deepest and most liquid, so lenders don't look for high interest rates because they can get their money out any time they want, and make a reasonable return lending to Uncle Sam. Right up until the moment they don't - and then $36 trillion becomes a very big problem. We have seen this up close and personal in Ireland during the financial crisis. And although the US is a long way from Ireland's financial woes, when interest rates start to rise (the famous 'yield' on government bonds goes up) governments get worried. This is exactly what happened in the US recently over the president's tariff policy. Such was the disruption to trade and commerce, investors rethought their strategy and demanded higher interest rates for lending money to the government. The so called "bond market vigilantes" didn't like the Trump tariffs, and put pressure on the government in ways ordinary voters cannot. They did for former UK prime minister Liz Truss three years ago, and wreaked havoc among the PIIGS 15 years ago (Portugal, Ireland, Italy, Greece and Spain - all doing a lot better than the Euro area average these days, thank you for asking). So Trump already has the vigilantes on his back over trade. But he promised the voters tariffs, and said the money raised from them would help balance the government books. Trump slammed Biden for his deficit spending (6.5% of GDP last year - the Maastricht Treaty limit in Europe is 3%, and an "excessive deficit" ruling requires governments to set up a plan to get the deficit back in range - ideally balanced over a number of years). In America they have a debt limit - an effort by Congress to rein in the constant deficit spending. Every so often - these days with increasing frequency - the Congress has to raise the debt limit, so the government can borrow more to fund day-to-day activities. If not, the government starts to shut down. This has actually happened in the past. There have been three last minute raises in the debt limit in the past year, as the anti-borrowing members of Congress engaged in brinkmanship to try and bring a runaway budget under control. Enter the man with a chainsaw and baseball cap. I watched from the back of the hall in a convention centre hotel in National Harbour, Maryland, as Musk took to the stage at the C-PAC annual DC gathering of Conservative political activists. The chainsaw was a gift from Argentina's President Javier Milei, who presented it to him on stage. During that August podcast with Trump, Musk cited Milei as an example the US should follow, as did Trump himself - "the new head of a place called Argentina, he's a big MAGA fan: he ran on MAGA and he took it to extremes, and I hear he's doing really a terrific really cut and I'm hearing they are starting to do really well". Musk concurred, saying Milei was cutting government spending, simplifying regulations and doing things "that make sense". He said Argentina was a lesson for the US in what can go bad - a country that used to be very wealthy but which had gone way off course by poor policy choices. Musk tried earnestly to tell Trump his belief that government over-spending causes inflation, that "if the government spends far more than it brings in, that increases the money supply, and if the money supply increases faster than the rate of goods and services - that's inflation", he told a clearly bored Trump, who started talking about how he had rebuilt the US military in his first term in office, before getting the message at the third time of asking: "I think it would be great to just have a government efficiency commission that takes a look at these things and just ensures that the taxpayers' money is spent in a good way. And I'd be happy to help out on such a commission," said Elon Musk. "I'd love it", said Donald Trump, finally. "You're the greatest cutter", he said laying on the praise for Musk's record in business. "You walk into a company, they want to go on strike, you say that's OK - you're all gone. You're all gone. So every one of you is gone. So you are the greatest." It was the beginning of the bromance, as Musk invested his hopes in the candidate, and Trump strapped on the booster rocket of Elon's fame and prestige. That, and the hundreds of millions of dollars Musk threw at the Trump election campaign, including paying voters to register to vote, with the chance of winning a million-dollar jackpot in battleground states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. And there was the undeniable star power of Musk himself - tech zillionaire, car maker, rocketship maker, owner of a social media platform, paymaster to Neuralink (a genuinely useful company) and Starlink, the satellite internet company. Truly Musk was and remains a rockstar of the digital age. He brought new, hard to reach voters into the Trump rallies and their more important TV audiences, adding even more energy to the already high-wattage Trump himself brought to bear. He was particularly important in cementing the coalition of 'tech and crypto bros', and the 'manosphere' of podcasters that brought a significant lump of younger male voters over to Trump. In a tight election, it made a difference - possibly the difference. He had the mission, he had the means, he had a sort of a mandate from the voters, and most of all he had permission from Trump - permission to try and cut government spending, abolish departments, fire civil servants - engage in all the fast, simple, direct action many of the MAGA faithful wanted to see: if it inflicted pain on the hated Washington DC and its Deep State denizens, even better. So Musk moved fast and broke things and predictably ran into trouble with the actual cabinet members - the ones who actually are in charge of government departments, the ones who actually had to appear before Congress and do hearings to see if they were suitable for the job and would adhere to the constitution and all that. The first report of a screaming match at a cabinet gathering was not long in coming. More followed as February progressed. Still the cult of Elon Musk grew in the outside world, even as the reality of DOGE was slowly revealed as it attempted to smash the granite edifice of the federal government and its two and a half centuries of political deal-making and legal fortifications. A revolution was afoot in Washington, I wrote in early February, in a piece casting Musk as the Robespierre of this revolt. It was a not so subtle nod to the widely held view in DC that Musk would not last long in government, that his way of cutting just wasn't sustainable. Nor would it result in enough savings. It would just annoy people. And so it did, not just cabinet secretaries, but more importantly, Trump himself. "Elon was wearing thin", he posted on his social media platform Truth Social on Thursday. "I asked him to leave, I took away his EV (electric vehicle) Mandate that forced everyone to buy Electric Cars that nobody else wanted (that he knew for months I was going to do!), and he just went CRAZY!" He followed it up with another post, touching on the big conflict of interest that always dogged Musk's government work: "The easiest way to save in our budget, Billions and Billions of Dollars, is to terminate Elon's governmental Subsidies and Contracts. I was always surprised Biden didn't do it." In his meeting with the German Chancellor Friedrich Merz (who skillfully said almost nothing, apart from a well aimed dart on Ukraine), Trump rose to a reporter's bait and spoke out against Musk over his attack on the One Big Beautiful Bill: "I'm very disappointed, because Elon knew the inner workings of this bill better than almost anybody sitting here, better than you people. "He knew everything about it. He had no problem with it. All of a sudden he had a problem, and he only developed the problem when he found out that we're going to have to cut the EV mandate, because that's billions and billions of dollars, and it really is unfair. "We want to have cars of all types, electric. We want to have electric, but we want to have a gasoline combustion. We want to have hybrids. We want to be able to sell everything. "And when that was cut, and Congress wanted to cut it, he became a little bit different, and I can understand that, but he knew every aspect of this bill. He knew it better than almost anybody, and he never had a problem until right after he left. "And if you saw the statements he made about me, which I'm sure you can get very easily, it's very fresh on tape, he said the most beautiful things about me, and he hasn't said bad about me personally, but I'm sure that'll be next. But I'm very disappointed in Elon. I've helped Elon a lot." Asked by a reporter in the Oval Office if Musk had raised his concerns about the tax and spend bill privately, and if Trump's own comments were just sour grapes, the President replied: "No, he worked hard and he did a good job, and I'll be honest, I think he misses the place. I think he got out there and all of a sudden he wasn't in this beautiful Oval Office, and he's got nice offices too - but there's something about this, it's just a special place. "World War One, it started and it ended here, and World War Two and so many other things. Everything big comes right from this, this beautiful space. It's now much more beautiful than it was six months ago. A lot of good things are happening in this room. "And I'll tell you, he's not the first: people leave my administration, and they love us. And then at some point they miss it so badly, and some of them embrace it, and some of them actually become hostile. I don't know what it is. It's sort of Trump derangement syndrome, I guess they call it, but we have it with others too. "They leave, and they wake up in the morning, and the glamour is gone. The whole world is different, and they become hostile. I don't know what it is. Someday you'll write a book about it, and you'll let us know." Musk's responses to his monstering on live TV - about 80 posts on his X social media platform in which he exhibited the full range of political skills of the average moody 16-year-old - veered from threatening to immediately decommission SpaceX's fleet of Dragon spaceships, used by NASA to ferry supplies and astronauts to the International Space Station, to claiming that the reason the Trump administration hasn't fulfilled its promise to publish the Epstein files is that Trump features in them. It is a matter of public record - i.e. newspaper articles, videos, photographs - that Donald Trump and Jeffrey Epstein knew each other and attended social events together, including parties at Epstein's Manhattan mansion. These were mostly in the 1980s and 90s, when Trump would attend the opening of an envelope if it would get him a mention in the New York Post. They are not the smoking gun Mr Musk thinks they are. They are barely the smoke. The row that had been coming for months was now on full public display. The gloves were off, and what used to be called a Twitter fight was under way, the richest man in the world and the president of the United States behaving in an undignified manner for the entertainment of the masses. Rarely has the popcorn emoji on mobile phones been so thoroughly overused. But Trump is the winner here. Musk is simply the latest meal for the apex predator of American politics. Like the nature films where the young buck tries to take on the old alpha and is seen off, so Musk is away with his tail between his legs. His excursion into the swamp of DC politics ended in pain, humiliation and considerable financial loss. The share price of Tesla, Musk's main source of wealth, are down 30% since the start of the year, as enough consumers reacted with a boycott of the electric carmakers products that it caused a crisis at the company that required his full-time attention to fix. And his full-time keeping quiet on the national political stage. His personal loss of fortune since joining the Trump administration was estimated at $27bn dollars. The Irish banking crisis cost €31bn. Once Tesla reported its first quarter results, the clock was ticking very fast for Elon Musk's tenure in the US government. That's when it became generally known that he was on a 130-day contract that would finish at the end of May. Then he was said to be in wind-down mode, withdrawing from government having established the core DOGE team (featuring a precocious 19-year-old known as "big balls"). Both sides tried to handle the departure with grace and formality. But then once he had his US equivalent of a P45 in his hand, Musk launched a blistering attack on Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill (OBBB), calling it "disgusting" and "pork-filled" earlier this week. "I'm sorry, but I just can't stand it anymore. This massive, outrageous, pork-filled Congressional spending bill is a disgusting abomination. Shame on those who voted for it: you know you did wrong. You know it," Musk wrote on X on Tuesday night. Was the whole DOGE thing just a distraction, something to create the kind of instability that Trump thrives in so that he could get his real priorities through the system - a system he knew far more about than Musk? Was Musk just used by Trump? Will Musk seek revenge by funding primary challengers to vulnerable Republicans in next year's mid-term elections? California Democrat Ro Khanna says the party should embrace Elon Musk. Musk himself is now musing on starting a third party "that actually represents the 80% of Americans in the middle". Will any of this come to pass? Who knows. All that is sure is that the OBBB is still facing the fundamental arithmetic problem we started off with. The bill as it stands would make the tax cuts that Trump introduced in 2017 permanent. They are currently due to expire next year. Trump likes to call them the biggest tax cut ever: if they do expire, Americans will accordingly face the biggest tax hike ever. Obviously no sitting politicians wants that on their record. So Trump must have those tax cuts made permanent. And that will cost money. Which this bill does not prove for. According to the Congressional Budget Office, the bill as approved by the House of Representatives and now before the Senate contains $3.7bn in tax cuts. Offsetting this is $1.3 trillion in proposed spending cuts. That leaves a $2.4 trillion dollar hole in the accounts, to be filled by more borrowing. Trump disputes the CBO figures, saying they don't take sufficient account of the economic growth he says will come from extending the tax cuts and the investment flowing from his 'America First' trade and tariff policy. There will also be some additional revenue from tariffs, he argues - but nowhere near enough to close the gap. But $2.4 trillion is a lot of hope value. Musk said at the outset he hoped to cut a trillion off government spending through DOGE. The current estimates say DOGE has at best achieved about a fifth of that, probably less. And now Elon is gone. Maybe "Big Balls" and his chums can do it - but again there is a lot of hope value in the proposition. Meanwhile the bond market vigilantes are poised, and the balanced budget fundamentalists in the Senate are talking up a last stand. There are two of them - Rand Paul and Ron Johnson. Trump could lose these two and still carry the day in the Senate, where the Republicans have a 53-47 majority. Four other Republican senators talk a good game on the Federal debt, but are swayable, and will probably be swayed by Trump - especially now he has dispatched the richest man in the world with brutality and cunning. In this he was aided by Steve Bannon, the godfather of MAGA, who despises Musk and the entire Silicon Valley set, regarding them as tech plutocrats intent on robbing Americans of their money and their liberty - especially the latter. He has also called for an investigation into Musk's immigration status, dubbing him an illegal immigrant from Africa. And he urged Trump to seize control of Starlink. Musk called Bannon "a Communist retard". MAGA probably won't miss Musk. But don't rule out a reconciliation, especially if it suits Trump. Plenty of Trump supporters have been calling for a healing of the rift. Former Russian President Dimitry Medvedev jokingly offered Russian mediation to end the hostilities between Trump and Musk - for a fee. In the meantime, all of Trump's domestic energy will be focused on getting the OBBB across the line in the Senate. He wants it ready to sign by 4 July, of course.
Irish Times
15 hours ago
- Irish Times
Scientists develop new way to detect deepfake videos
Scientists at the Netherlands Forensic Institute have developed a groundbreaking new method to identify deepfake videos by looking for subtle changes in facial colour caused by the human heartbeat. 'In video of a real person, one can detect blood flow around the eyes, forehead and jaw – and that's exactly what's missing in deepfakes', according to lead investigator Zeno Geradts, professor of forensic data science at Amsterdam University. Deepfake videos – artificial intelligence -generated content in which real people appear to do or say things they never did or said – are seen as posing risks to society because victims can be inserted into sexually explicit content, for example, or misrepresented in fake news. The new technique, called blood flow detection, uses advanced image analysis to identify tiny variations in skin tone created by a human subject's pulse – variations that are absent in manufactured or manipulated footage. READ MORE When the Dutch team first investigated the issue 13 years ago, poor video quality made such sophisticated analysis impossible. Since then, video technology has evolved, and a combination of improved picture resolution – measured in terms of the number of pixels in a video frame – and rapidly developing artificial intelligence (AI) tools has allowed the experts to successfully revisit the problem. 'When we looked at this first in 2012, we were being asked by police to analyse so-called snuff videos showing extreme violence, including torture and murder, circulated via dark web platforms and on encrypted messaging apps. 'We were trying to find a way to establish scientifically that the victims being shown in those videos were real people.' The fundamental crux was the inadequacy of video compression technology, said Prof Geradts. 'Large video files had to be reduced in size and during that compression process the colour differences per heartbeat were lost. 'But now, more than a decade later, compression methods have improved and we can detect even the slightest discolouration caused by pulsing blood flow.' How to manage your pension in these volatile times Listen | 37:00 In the most recent tests, volunteers were filmed wearing heart monitors and their heart rates were then matched against colour changes at 79 points on the face, under a range of lighting conditions and varieties of movement. The project confirmed a strong correlation between visible colour changes and the heart rate measurements in all the different settings. The results, say the Dutch team, were 'very promising'. 'AI can do a lot but it still cannot generate a convincing pulse', said Prof Geradts. Although it is used in individual investigations, blood flow detection is not yet in routine forensic use, mainly because it hasn't been fully validated for use in court cases – but that may be just a matter of time. 'In the world we live in, forensic research into deepfakes is more urgent than ever,' said Prof Geradts. 'I sometimes worry that soon everything will be regarded as potentially fake. Then how will we know what's real?' According to a Dutch national helpline for victims of online abuse, reports of deepfake pornography and manipulated nude images increased in the Netherlands by 31 per cent in 2024.
