Is AI really going to eliminate many jobs?

Jorge Costa Oliveira

A Gallup survey (June 2025) [in the U.S.] shows an increase in the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in the workplace, though it concludes that workers are unlikely to be replaced by AI any time soon. Still, about 15% of workers say it is likely that automation, robotics or AI will eliminate their jobs within the next five years.

Already in 2024, the IMF warned that “the new generative AI technologies have immense potential to boost productivity and improve public service delivery, but the speed and scale of the transformation also raise concerns about job losses and rising inequality,” leaving “large swaths” of people unemployed for long periods.

Executives at companies developing AI have acknowledged the loss of many jobs currently performed by human workers.

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, in an interview with CNBC, said that generative AI and large language models have the potential to “make all business processes more productive,” which “means you can get the same work done with fewer people.”

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said he expects “in the coming years, to reduce the overall workforce as we gain efficiency from the extensive use of AI across the company.” Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang painted a more optimistic picture: “some jobs will be lost, some will be created, but all jobs will be affected. You’re not going to lose your job to AI. You’re going to lose your job to someone using AI.”

But Dario Amodei – CEO of Anthropic, one of the world’s most powerful AI developers – recently issued a chilling warning: AI could cause the mass elimination of jobs in technology, finance, law, consulting and other white-collar professions, especially entry-level roles, pushing unemployment to 10%–20% within the next five years. Ford’s CEO also predicts that AI will “literally replace half of all white-collar workers.”

According to an August 26, 2025 study by Stanford University researchers, entry-level jobs for workers aged 22–25 have declined by 13% since the widespread adoption of generative AI. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg said he expects AI to write half of the company’s code in 2026. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that about 30% of his company’s code is already being written by AI (95% by 2030); just this year, Microsoft has already laid off 15,000 workers. JPMorgan announced that AI will allow the bank to cut staff by 10% in operations and account services.

Last but not the least, the “Godfather of AI” and Nobel Prize winner, Geoffrey Hinton, who recently left Google, says the [AI] technology will create massive unemployment (and send profits soaring). Hinton has long warned about the dangers of AI without guardrails, estimating a 10% to 20% chance of the technology wiping out humans after the development of superintelligence. Hinton thinks that jobs that perform mundane tasks, along with job opportunities at the entry level (where recent college graduates start their careers) will be taken over by AI, but the same will not happen on jobs that require a high level of skill.

Perhaps it is time to focus less on the froth of daily news and more on how to mitigate the effects of this imminent additional unemployment.

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