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CNN
5 hours ago
- Business
- CNN
Will AI really decimate human jobs? Tech industry insiders are split
People have worried that computers will take their jobs for basically as long as they've been around, but those fears have felt more realistic than ever over the past year as artificial intelligence has begun to overhaul the way people work. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei amplified those concerns in May when he warned AI could spike unemployment, particularly among white-collar jobs, to 20% over the next one to five years. Certain companies are already enlisting AI to do some of the work previously done by people; Meta, Microsoft and Salesforce are increasingly using AI to code among other tasks. And CEOs of companies ranging from Amazon to JPMorgan have warned their human workforces will shrink because of AI. However, some of those predictions deserve a healthy dose of skepticism. 'AI is so good, it's going to put humans out of jobs' is a strong marketing message for companies selling the technology, and a potentially convenient excuse for an executive already mulling a workforce downsize. The answer to whether AI really spells trouble for human workers isn't so black and white. That's according to more than half a dozen tech industry insiders CNN spoke with over the past month, who are mixed on just how much and how fast AI will upend the job market. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, for example, told CNN AI will kill jobs only if 'the world runs out of ideas.' And Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis told CNN that an AI 'jobpocalypse' is among his minor concerns when it comes to the technology's impact. Nonetheless, tech companies themselves have cut hundreds, in some cases thousands, of roles this year as they implement AI to take on a growing share of software development and other tasks. There does seem to be broad consensus that the nature of work, including how it's done and which tasks humans do, is going to change, and perhaps more rapidly than with any previous technological transformation the world has seen before. More than half of Americans say they're worried about AI's impact on the workplace, and a third believe AI will lead to fewer job opportunities for them over time, according to a Pew Research Center survey published in February. But the troubling AI failures that seem to make headlines every few weeks — from Elon Musk's Grok chatbot spouting antisemitic tropes after what the company called a faulty update to newspapers running AI-generated summer reading lists containing made up books — can make it hard to believe a wide-scale reliance on a robot workforce is just around the corner. 'I think that there will be some displacement. I think there'll be new job categories that emerge,' said Gaurab Bansal, executive director of the nonprofit startup consultancy Responsible Innovation Labs. 'I think we're looking at a complex reshaping, rather than a straightforward elimination.' And we're just at the start. 'I think we're entering a decade-ish, maybe more, period of uncertainty,' Bansal said. Small circles in Silicon Valley have for years been discussing how AI will upend the labor market — along with proposals for mitigating that impact, such as universal basic income, an approach that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has backed. But the conversation has burst onto the public scene in recent months as tech giants introduce 'agentic AI' tools. Unlike chatbots, where in each interaction users put in one question and get back one relatively simple response, agentic AI systems can handle more complex, multi-step tasks without step-by-step prodding. Think: coding a website based on a user's idea of what it should look like or do, or researching a topic and compiling it into a presentation. OpenAI last week launched an agent mode for ChatGPT that can accomplish tasks on behalf of users, while Anthropic in May introduced a model it claims can work independently for almost an entire workday. 'Now, you can give (the AI system) a goal, and it'll automatically break that down into a sequence of steps that it needs to perform the goal,' Swami Sivasubramanian, vice president of agentic AI at Amazon Web Services told CNN. 'You suddenly have a reasoning, thinking system that can use various tools, so now the possibilities are really up,' in terms of how they can be used in the workplace. Amazon, for example, used an AI developer agent to upgrade 30,000 software applications across the company last year. The project would have taken an estimated 4,500 software developers a year to complete, but the AI completed the task in just six months, according to the company. The switch saved Amazon around $250 million in capital expenditures, Sivasubramanian said. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella also said earlier this year that 20% to 30% of the company's code was being generated by AI. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said around half of the company's code development would be done by AI by next year. And Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff told Bloomberg the company uses AI for about 30% to 50% of the company's work. Unlike earlier technology transformations, like the automation that's taken place in industrial settings, AI is relatively easy to adopt to improve or take over human tasks. 'AI workers are just software, and so you don't need to buy expensive physical machinery,' said Steven Adler, a former OpenAI researcher. 'The AI workers can also be upgraded easily when there's a stronger version. Particularly for companies used to getting software from the cloud … there's less friction to (deploying) a 'virtual coworker' product than ever before.' While certain categories of work, including coding and data analytics, are ripe for more significant disruption, many experts argue other roles will undergo changes rather than being eliminated altogether. Most workers, they say, will use AI to automate repetitive tasks, leaving them more time to work on creative or relational aspects of their job. A doctor, for example, might have an AI assistant take notes during a patient's visit and fill out their chart autonomously, giving that doctor more time for face-to-face discussions with the patient. 'Most tasks for most jobs can't be automated,' Meta's Chief AI Scientist Yann LeCun said in a LinkedIn post last month. Put another way, AI is 'good, but not perfect, for a subset' of tasks that human workers currently do, but it can't replace most people outright, said Yacine Jernite, machine learning and society lead at open-source AI firm Hugging Face. Companies and governments are investing in training workers for the AI era, including an AI training academy for teachers that a group of tech giants is partnering with teachers' unions to build in New York City. The White House last month launched a pledge for companies committed to investing in AI training and education for America's youth, which has been signed by 68 firms. Dennis Woodside, CEO of the IT and customer service management software company Freshworks, said his firm is shifting workers that once reactively responded to customer support requests — a job more easily done by AI — to more hands-on work with clients. Some in the industry believe that AI will make some jobs obsolete, but it will also create new categories of work we can't currently imagine. 'We saw that in the Internet era, where trillions of dollars of economic value were created each year and some of the biggest, most valuable, most successful companies that were started back then are prominent today in the economy,' said Dan Priest, chief AI officer at professional services firm PwC. 'Net-net there should be a positive benefit to jobs growth, it's just going to be different jobs.' Still, Jernite said he worries leaders in Corporate America might feel pressured to start making changes simply because they've heard that AI could replace jobs. 'And people follow that direction, they fire people, and it doesn't have anything to do with what the technology can or cannot do, but how it's perceived,' Jernite said. 'Then they rehire those people when they figure out that's not how you leverage this really wonderful technology in a way that's responsible and sustainable.' The transition could be uncomfortable. Adler, the former OpenAI researcher, said he expects many white-collar workers will start to see lower wages as AI augments their jobs. 'AI will make an individual worker more productive and will help more people to be capable of doing a given job,' Adler said. 'The net effect is an oversupply of labor, which pushes wages down unless there's a big surge in labor demand.' Ultimately, Bansal said he believes policymakers must create a new economic framework for the AI era to ensure it's not just powerful tech companies benefiting at the expense of regular workers with fewer opportunities and more pressure to be productive. And, ideally, they need to move a lot faster than they did in addressing challenges posed by earlier waves of technology. 'We need a new social contract for this era,' he said. 'The bargain we have between workers and sort of the economy is born of a different technological era.' CNN's Lisa Eadicicco contributed to this report.
Yahoo
17 hours ago
- Business
- Yahoo
More men are returning to the office. Here's why that matters for women.
The return to office is in full swing, but you might notice more men around the water cooler. According to the Department of Labor, men are returning to the office in greater numbers than women. In 2024, 29% of employed men reported working from home, down from 34% the previous year. Approximately 36% of women worked from home last year, unchanged from 2023. What's behind these numbers? It's likely a result of return-to-office initiatives in male-dominated industries like tech, Cory Stahle, senior economist at Indeed, told Yahoo Finance. Women accounted for only about a quarter of computer and mathematical jobs in 2024, according to the data. For some roles, like computer programmers and computer hardware engineers, the share is even lower — 17.8% and 14.3% — respectively. 'Many of these return-to-office efforts are coming at a time when demand for workers in male-dominated industries has weakened, giving employers the upper hand,' Stahle said. As for the unbudging number of women working remotely over that two-year period, there could be an explanation for that finding as well, according to Stahle. Female-dominated fields such as private education and health services, leisure and hospitality, and state and local government have been less affected by return-to-work mandates, he said. 'Many of the jobs in these industries are already in-person roles.' Obstacle for gender equity Whether women are trying to move up or break into fields where office time is required, the trend away from remote arrangements could have far-reaching repercussions for gender equity. Here's why: Nearly 9 in 10 CEOs said in a 2024 survey that they 'will reward employees who make an effort to come into the office with favorable assignments, raises, or promotions.' That could also play out in the gender wage gap that has persisted across industries for decades. Last year, women earned an average of 85% of what men earned, according to Pew Research Center. Will the pay gap get worse if in-office attendance is a prerequisite for pay bumps? "In theory, remote work can be viewed as either a positive or negative amenity: It may offer greater scheduling flexibility, enhancing work-life balance, but it may also limit access to face-to-face mentoring and raise concerns about potential career growth penalties,' said Zoë Cullen, a lead researcher for a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) study on remote work. We do know that roughly 8 in 10 CEOs envision a full return to the office in the next three years, and many of those making it mandatory have threatened employees with termination if they fail to follow the company's return-to-office mandate. So far, the types of jobs being hit by these mandates have been well-paying, white-collar roles, Stahle said. 'If a worker can't or chooses not to return to the office and loses their higher-paying job as a result, that will have clear implications for the pay gap and the economy,' he said. The arc of remote work Remote work has been facing into the wind all year. Organizations that describe their workplace environment as remote shrank dramatically between 2024 and 2025, according to a study by Payscale. Despite the pressure, plenty of workers, not just women, are standing their ground on full-blown return-to-office attendance and are willing to take a pay cut to hold on to some flexibility. A majority of job candidates would accept a pay cut to work remotely, according to a new survey by Criteria Corp. On average, employees are willing to accept a 25% pay cut for partly or fully remote roles, according to the NBER study. All that said, the balance of power has shifted. In 2023, when workers had the upper hand in a tight labor market, the odds of being penalized for not coming into the office were low, or in many cases, not realistic for employers, who were well aware that workplace flexibility was one way that they could hang on to and lure skilled workers. Return-to-office demands by many tech-oriented employers, including Amazon, Google, and Meta, hit a fever pitch earlier this year. 'In a softening labor market, employers have more leverage to demand in-office work,' Marc Cenedella, founder of Ladders Inc., a career site for jobs that pay $100,000 or more, told Yahoo Finance. 'The great resignation is over. The great return is upon us.' Sign up for the Mind Your Money weekly newsletter By subscribing, you are agreeing to Yahoo's Terms and Privacy Policy Hybrid to the rescue Compromise, however, has inched in. And that playbook can work for many women, who still shoulder a disproportionate share of caregiving responsibilities for children and aging parents, and need and value flexibility more than men. Flexible work benefits have stabilized enough to suggest a permanent place in employers' benefits, according to a new SHRM Employee Benefits Survey. Overall, hybrid office environments — where attendance is generally three days a week for so-called knowledge workers (not front-line ones) — are the norm now at more than half of companies, followed by traditional office environments at 27%, with remote-first environments making up only 16% of office types, per Payscale data. In fact, while 4 in 10 organizations deployed a return-to-office mandate in recent years, an increasing number have done a bit of soft shoe around the specific requirements and have loosened the rules depending on job type and for those who are top aging population factor Long-term trends in the workforce could ultimately help women gain ground. 'As the baby boomer generation ages and companies grapple with fewer younger workers and our labor market tightens, companies can't afford to overlook any segment of the workforce, especially women,' said Gwenn Rosener, co-founder of recruiting firm FlexProfessionals. Because fewer people are born each year, our workforce is going to start to shrink, and we need workers to make products, provide services, and pay taxes, Bradley Schurman, a demographic strategist, told Yahoo Finance. 'So, as we enter this period of the Super Age, with more people over the age of 65 than under the age of 18, this is going to create market conditions that are going to increase the demand for workers of all ages because the supply is so low,' he said. 'Women will be able to negotiate for greater benefits and for greater salaries and more flexibility. And it's not just women, disabled and other marginalized groups will likely benefit too." Kerry Hannon is a Senior Columnist at Yahoo Finance. She is a career and retirement strategist and the author of 14 books, including the forthcoming "Retirement Bites: A Gen X Guide to Securing Your Financial Future," "In Control at 50+: How to Succeed in the New World of Work," and "Never Too Old to Get Rich." Follow her on Bluesky. Sign up for the Mind Your Money newsletter Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Washington Post
21 hours ago
- Business
- Washington Post
Court rules Mississippi's social media age verification law can go into effect
A Mississippi law that requires social media users to verify their ages can go into effect, a federal court has ruled. A tech industry group has pledged to continue challenging the law , arguing it infringes on users' rights to privacy and free expression. A three-judge panel of the 5th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals overruled a decision by a federal district judge to block the 2024 law from going into effect. It's the latest legal development as court challenges play out against similar laws in states across the country.
Yahoo
a day ago
- Business
- Yahoo
More men are returning to the office. Here's why that matters for women.
The return to office is in full swing, but you might notice more men around the water cooler. According to the Department of Labor, men are returning to the office in greater numbers than women. In 2024, 29% of employed men reported working from home, down from 34% the previous year. Approximately 36% of women worked from home last year, unchanged from 2023. What's behind these numbers? It's likely a result of return-to-office initiatives in male-dominated industries like tech, Cory Stahle, senior economist at Indeed, told Yahoo Finance. Women accounted for only about a quarter of computer and mathematical jobs in 2024, according to the data. For some roles, like computer programmers and computer hardware engineers, the share is even lower — 17.8% and 14.3% — respectively. 'Many of these return-to-office efforts are coming at a time when demand for workers in male-dominated industries has weakened, giving employers the upper hand,' Stahle said. As for the unbudging number of women working remotely over that two-year period, there could be an explanation for that finding as well, according to Stahle. Female-dominated fields such as private education and health services, leisure and hospitality, and state and local government have been less affected by return-to-work mandates, he said. 'Many of the jobs in these industries are already in-person roles.' Obstacle for gender equity Whether women are trying to move up or break into fields where office time is required, the trend away from remote arrangements could have far-reaching repercussions for gender equity. Here's why: Nearly 9 in 10 CEOs said in a 2024 survey that they 'will reward employees who make an effort to come into the office with favorable assignments, raises, or promotions.' That could also play out in the gender wage gap that has persisted across industries for decades. Last year, women earned an average of 85% of what men earned, according to Pew Research Center. Will the pay gap get worse if in-office attendance is a prerequisite for pay bumps? "In theory, remote work can be viewed as either a positive or negative amenity: It may offer greater scheduling flexibility, enhancing work-life balance, but it may also limit access to face-to-face mentoring and raise concerns about potential career growth penalties,' said Zoë Cullen, a lead researcher for a National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) study on remote work. We do know that roughly 8 in 10 CEOs envision a full return to the office in the next three years, and many of those making it mandatory have threatened employees with termination if they fail to follow the company's return-to-office mandate. So far, the types of jobs being hit by these mandates have been well-paying, white-collar roles, Stahle said. 'If a worker can't or chooses not to return to the office and loses their higher-paying job as a result, that will have clear implications for the pay gap and the economy,' he said. The arc of remote work Remote work has been facing into the wind all year. Organizations that describe their workplace environment as remote shrank dramatically between 2024 and 2025, according to a study by Payscale. Despite the pressure, plenty of workers, not just women, are standing their ground on full-blown return-to-office attendance and are willing to take a pay cut to hold on to some flexibility. A majority of job candidates would accept a pay cut to work remotely, according to a new survey by Criteria Corp. On average, employees are willing to accept a 25% pay cut for partly or fully remote roles, according to the NBER study. All that said, the balance of power has shifted. In 2023, when workers had the upper hand in a tight labor market, the odds of being penalized for not coming into the office were low, or in many cases, not realistic for employers, who were well aware that workplace flexibility was one way that they could hang on to and lure skilled workers. Return-to-office demands by many tech-oriented employers, including Amazon, Google, and Meta, hit a fever pitch earlier this year. 'In a softening labor market, employers have more leverage to demand in-office work,' Marc Cenedella, founder of Ladders Inc., a career site for jobs that pay $100,000 or more, told Yahoo Finance. 'The great resignation is over. The great return is upon us.' Sign up for the Mind Your Money weekly newsletter By subscribing, you are agreeing to Yahoo's Terms and Privacy Policy Hybrid to the rescue Compromise, however, has inched in. And that playbook can work for many women, who still shoulder a disproportionate share of caregiving responsibilities for children and aging parents, and need and value flexibility more than men. Flexible work benefits have stabilized enough to suggest a permanent place in employers' benefits, according to a new SHRM Employee Benefits Survey. Overall, hybrid office environments — where attendance is generally three days a week for so-called knowledge workers (not front-line ones) — are the norm now at more than half of companies, followed by traditional office environments at 27%, with remote-first environments making up only 16% of office types, per Payscale data. In fact, while 4 in 10 organizations deployed a return-to-office mandate in recent years, an increasing number have done a bit of soft shoe around the specific requirements and have loosened the rules depending on job type and for those who are top aging population factor Long-term trends in the workforce could ultimately help women gain ground. 'As the baby boomer generation ages and companies grapple with fewer younger workers and our labor market tightens, companies can't afford to overlook any segment of the workforce, especially women,' said Gwenn Rosener, co-founder of recruiting firm FlexProfessionals. Because fewer people are born each year, our workforce is going to start to shrink, and we need workers to make products, provide services, and pay taxes, Bradley Schurman, a demographic strategist, told Yahoo Finance. 'So, as we enter this period of the Super Age, with more people over the age of 65 than under the age of 18, this is going to create market conditions that are going to increase the demand for workers of all ages because the supply is so low,' he said. 'Women will be able to negotiate for greater benefits and for greater salaries and more flexibility. And it's not just women, disabled and other marginalized groups will likely benefit too." Kerry Hannon is a Senior Columnist at Yahoo Finance. She is a career and retirement strategist and the author of 14 books, including the forthcoming "Retirement Bites: A Gen X Guide to Securing Your Financial Future," "In Control at 50+: How to Succeed in the New World of Work," and "Never Too Old to Get Rich." Follow her on Bluesky. Sign up for the Mind Your Money newsletter Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
2 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Here's what the biggest names in tech and business think AI means for white-collar jobs
The biggest names in tech don't agree on what AI means for white-collar jobs. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei sparked fears when he said that AI could wipe out 50% of entry-level office jobs. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman doesn't see such a risk. He's not alone. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei issued a warning in May that AI is going to wipe out entry-level white-collar jobs He said other AI companies and the government are "sugarcoating" the risks of breakthrough technologies within the next five years. Other CEOs and business leaders have disagreed or framed the change with more optimism. "And the hard part about this is, I think it will happen faster than previous technological changes. But I think the new jobs will be better, and people will have better stuff," OpenAI CEO said in June. Here's what some of the biggest names in tech and business are saying about the future of jobs. Dario Amodei Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei kicked off the conversation by warning about how quickly large language models are advancing. "We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming," Amodei told Axios. "I don't think this is on people's radar." Amodei said it can seem weird that the AI companies would warn about their own technology. "Well, what if they're right?" Amodei said. Sam Altman OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said some jobs will go away, but society will adapt. "And the hard part about this is, I think it will happen faster than previous technological changes. But I think the new jobs will be better, and people will have better stuff," Altman said during a live episode of The New York Times' "Hard Fork" podcast in June. Altman said that even if it were true that such a large number of jobs were about to be wiped out, "the inertia of society" wouldn't allow for it. "And the take that half the jobs are going to be gone in a year or two years or five years or whatever — I think that's just — I think that's not how society really works," he said. "Even if the technology weren't ready for that, the inertia of society, which will be helpful in this case, is like — there's a lot of mass there." Jensen Huang Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang didn't mince words. "I pretty much disagree with almost everything he says," Huang told reporters of Amoedi's views at VivaTech 2025 in Paris. "He thinks AI is so scary, but only they should do it." Huang said that he's much more optimistic. "If you want things to be done safely and responsibly, you should do it in the open," Huang said, likening AI development to medical research, where transparency and peer review are essential. "I believe AI is not that expensive. Do I think AI will change jobs? It will change everyone's — it's changed mine." Marc Benioff Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said he's seeing no evidence of such a near-immediate upheaval. "That isn't how I see AI," Benioff said during a recent onstage interview at the 2025 AI for Good Global Summit. "Maybe they have AI, I don't have. But in the AI I have, it's not going to be some huge mass layoff of white-collar workers, it is a radical augmentation of the workforce." Benioff encouraged people to "shed their fear" about AI. "When I'm talking to our customers, I'm not hearing them say, "Oh, now I'm laying off these people because this A,B,C technology increase because of AI.' So, I think we need to somehow shed the fear of what that all means." Jim Farley Ford CEO Jim Farley said he sees problems ahead. "Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the US," Farley said during an appearance at the Aspen Ideas Festival. Farley said he's concerned that too much of the American education system is focused on four-year degrees instead of trades. Mark Cuban Mark Cuban said the situation will be the opposite of Amodei's warning. "Someone needs to remind the CEO that at one point there were more than 2m secretaries. There were also separate employees to do in office dictation. They were the original white collar displacements," Cuban wrote on in a post on Bluesky. "New companies with new jobs will come from AI and increase TOTAL employment," he continued. Brad Lightcap Like Altman, OpenAI's COO Brad Lightcap doesn't see the sky falling. "We have no evidence of this," Lightcap said during the "Hard Fork" podcast taping. "And Dario is a scientist. And I would hope he takes an evidence-based approach to these types of things." Lightcap said that every technology changes the job market. "I think every time you get a platform shift, you get a change in the job market," he said." I mean, in 1900, 40 percent of people worked in agriculture. It's 2 percent today. Microsoft Excel has probably been the greatest job displacer of the 20th century." Andy Jassy Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said that AI is already changing workflows. He said it will soon lead to a reduction in some jobs. "As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done," Jassy said in a memo posted to the Amazon website. "We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs." Sebastian Siemiatkowski Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said AI may cause a recession due to the sheer number of job cuts. "I don't want to be one of them," Siemiatkowski said of CEOs who downplay the changes AI will bring. "I want to be honest, I want to be fair, and I want to tell what I see so that society can start taking preparations." 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