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“Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.,” Ford (NYSE:F) CEO Jim Farley predicted at a recent event, the latest company chief to forecast the impact of the rapidly evolving technology on the workforce.
Farley believes that AI and new technologies have an asymmetric impact on the economy. “… that means a lot of things are helped a lot and a lot of things are hurt. AI will leave a lot of white-collar people behind.”
Other top executives have made similar predictions in recent months. Amazon (AMZN) CEO Andy Jassy told employees that efficiency gains from AI would likely reduce the company’s workforce in the next few years.
Dario Amodei, CEO of Amazon (AMZN)-backed AI startup Anthropic, told Axios that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and spike unemployment to 10%-20% in the next 1-5 years.
Marianne Lake, head of JPMorgan’s (JPM) consumer and community banking unit, said operations headcount could decline about 10% in the coming years amid growing AI adoption.
Meta (META) CEO Mark Zuckerberg in April predicted that most of the company’s code could be written by AI in the next 12-18 months.
“AI is coming for your jobs,” Micha Kaufman, CEO of freelance services marketplace Fiverr (FVRR) warned in April. “It does not matter if you are a programmer, designer, product manager, data scientist, lawyer, customer support rep, salesperson, or a finance person – AI is coming for you.”