LinkedIn cofounder Reid Hoffman says people are underestimating AI's impact on jobs, but it won't be a 'bloodbath'
Reid Hoffman, the venture capitalist who cofounded LinkedIn, said AI will transform jobs, but he rejected the idea that it will result in a "bloodbath" for job seekers.
"Yes, I think people are underestimating AI's impact on jobs," Hoffman said on an episode of the Rapid Response podcast, released Tuesday.
"But I think inducing panic as a response is serving media announcement purposes," he said, "and not actually, in fact, intelligent industry and economic and career path planning."
The podcast's host, Bob Safian, asked Hoffman about comments made by Dario Amodei, CEO of AI firm Anthropic, in May.
In an interview with Axios, Amodei warned that AI companies and governments needed to stop "sugarcoating" the potential for mass job losses in white-collar industries like finance, law, and consulting.
"We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming," Amodei said.
He estimated that AI could spike unemployment by up to 20% in the next five years, and may eliminate half of entry-level white-collar jobs within that same period.
Hoffman said he had called the Anthropic CEO to discuss it.
"'Bloodbath' is a very good way to grab internet headlines, media headlines," Hoffman said. (Axios, not Amodei, used the phrase "white-collar bloodbath.")
But, Hoffman added, "bloodbath just implies everything going away."
He said he disagreed with this assessment, believing that transformation, not mass elimination, of jobs is a more likely outcome.
"Dario is right that over a decade or three, there will be a massive set of job transformation," Hoffman said.
But he compared it to the introduction of tools like Microsoft Excel, which were believed by some at the time to mark the end of accountancy roles.
"In fact, the accountant job got broader, richer," Hoffman said.
He added: "Just because a function's coming that has a replacement area on a certain set of tasks doesn't mean all of this job's going to get replaced."
Instead of AI eliminating roles, Hoffman predicted: "We at least have many years, if not a long time, of person-plus-AI doing things."
Hoffman isn't the only business leader to question Amodei's AI doomsday prophecy.
Speaking at VivaTech in Paris earlier this month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he and Amodei "pretty much disagree with almost everything" on AI.
"One, he believes that AI is so scary that only they should do it," Huang said. "Two, that AI is so expensive, nobody else should do it."
Huang added, "And three, AI is so incredibly powerful that everyone will lose their jobs, which explains why they should be the only company building it."
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