Artificial intelligence could eliminate half of entry-level jobs and cause unemployment to soon rise to 10%–20%, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told Axios reporters Mike Allen and Jim VandeHei in an interview.

“AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs — and spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next one to five years,” Amodei said in the interview from his San Francisco office. He added that both the government and AI companies need to stop “sugar-coating” what’s ahead: the potential mass elimination of jobs across white-collar sectors including technology, finance, law, and consulting.

Amodei warned that the effects of AI will likely be uneven across society, with the largest job losses hitting people in their 20s who are just entering the workforce. He emphasized that while some new roles may emerge, they will likely be far fewer than the jobs lost — and require higher levels of skill and specialization.

One striking prediction Amodei offered was that even companies developing AI could shrink their own workforces. “Even in AI companies, the headcount could go down,” he said. “It’s ironic.”

According to the interview, Amodei also questioned whether today’s political and economic systems are prepared for the social and economic volatility that could follow widespread displacement. “If AI goes the way we think it might, the political system is just not ready,” he said.

Dario Amodei is CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, an AI safety and research company founded in 2021. The company developed Claude, a family of AI assistants designed with alignment and interpretability in mind, and is considered one of the key challengers to OpenAI.