To The Moon

X user Qcapital2020 has compiled a list of quotes in a recent post:

1.Jim Farley (CEO, Ford): “AI will replace half of all white-collar workers in the US.”

2.Dario Amodei (CEO, Anthropic): “White-collar bloodbath” — up to 50% of entry roles gone in 5 yrs.

3.Andy Jassy (CEO, Amazon): “We will need fewer people … this will reduce our total corporate workforce.”

4.Allison Kirkby (CEO, BT Group): AI could make layoffs “even deeper” than planned.

5.Arvind Krishna (CEO, IBM): ~7,800 roles could be automated out; paused hiring in replaceable areas.

6.Doug McMillon (CEO, Walmart): “AI is going to change literally every job.”

7.Marc Benioff (CEO, Salesforce): Cut 4,000 support jobs; AI now handles ~50% of calls.

8.Sebastian Siemiatkowski (CEO, Klarna): Workforce shrank from ~5,500 to ~3,000 via AI efficiency.

9.Jamie Dimon (CEO, JPMorgan Chase): AI will “take over jobs in certain departments” while creating others.

10.Sam Altman (CEO, OpenAI): Entire job categories will be “totally, totally gone.”

11.Jensen Huang (CEO, Nvidia): “Some jobs will be lost.”

12.Satya Nadella (CEO, Microsoft): AI will automate parts of many jobs.

13.Sundar Pichai (CEO, Alphabet/Google): AI will “transform jobs,” including eliminating some.

14.Elon Musk (CEO, Tesla / SpaceX / X): Warns AI / automation could “destroy jobs.”

15.Bill Gates (Co-founder, Microsoft): Automation / AI may wipe out many roles; has advocated policies to manage it.

16.Mo Gawdat (former Google X exec): “AI will wipe out jobs … even CEOs might be replaced.”

17.Geoffrey Hinton (AI pioneer): Warns of a future where “we may no longer be needed.”

18.Andrew Ng (AI researcher / entrepreneur): Says routine legal, clerical, coding work is under threat.

19.Kai-Fu Lee (CEO, Sinovation Ventures / ex-Google China): Predicts “routine cognitive work” will vanish.

20.Dilip Shanghvi (MD, Sun Pharma): Warns AI / automation will shrink roles in pharma / industry.

21.Eric Schmidt (former CEO, Google): Has cautioned that AI’s evolution has trade-offs, including job displacement.

22.Steve Wozniak (co-founder, Apple): Warned superintelligence may bring unprecedented disruption to work and society.

23.Yoshua Bengio (AI researcher / leader): Has voiced concerns about automation and risks to employment systems.

24.Stuart Russell (CS / AI leader): Argues AI control must address displacement and job risk.

25.Dov Seidman (former CEO, LSI / author): Has spoken publicly about AI’s threat to professional jobs and ethics.

26.Reid Hoffman (co-founder, LinkedIn): Warned AI tools will outpace many incumbents, displacing roles.

27.Jensen Huang (again, to emphasize contrast): even he concedes “some jobs will be lost.”

28.Mark Cuban (entrepreneur / investor): Frequently warns AI will disrupt many professions and reduce demand for human labor.

29.Jack Ma (co-founder, Alibaba): Historically warned that automation will replace people if they don’t upskill.

30.Eric Yuan (CEO, Zoom): Has acknowledged that machine intelligence / automation could “replace many tasks people do today.”

Here’s a summary of the main topics (from Grok):

1. Significant Job Displacement: Many leaders predict AI will cause substantial job losses, particularly in white-collar, entry-level, and routine cognitive roles. Estimates range from 50% of certain job categories being eliminated (e.g., Farley, Amodei) to entire departments being affected (e.g., Dimon, Altman).

2. Automation of Routine Tasks: AI is expected to automate repetitive tasks in industries like customer support (Benioff), clerical work (Ng), legal work (Ng), and pharma (Shanghvi), leading to workforce reductions (e.g., Klarna’s 45% staff cut).

3. Transformation of Work: Leaders like Nadella, Pichai, and McMillon emphasize that AI will change nearly every job, automating parts of roles while potentially creating new ones, though the net impact remains uncertain.

4. Industry-Wide Impact: AI’s disruption spans multiple sectors, including automotive (Farley), retail (McMillon), finance (Dimon), telecom (Kirkby), tech (Pichai, Nadella), and pharma (Shanghvi), indicating a broad economic effect.

5. New Opportunities vs. Losses: Some acknowledge that AI will create new industries and jobs (e.g., Dimon, Huang), but there’s skepticism about whether these will offset the losses (e.g., the original post’s concern, echoed by Musk, Gates, and others).

6. Need for Adaptation and Policy: Leaders like Gates, Russell, and Ma stress the need for upskilling, policy interventions, or AI control mechanisms to manage job displacement and societal disruption.

7. Existential Concerns: Visionaries like Hinton, Wozniak, and Gawdat warn of deeper risks, including the potential for AI to replace even high-level roles (e.g., CEOs) or render humans “no longer needed” in some contexts.

In summary, the posts highlight a consensus that AI will drastically reshape the job market, with significant automation-driven job losses, particularly in routine and white-collar roles, alongside calls for proactive measures to address the economic and societal fallout.

My investing muse

The Geopolitical Dimension and China’s Position

The AI race has a significant geopolitical component, and your insight into China’s advanced state in certain areas is strongly supported by recent data, especially regarding the foundational infrastructure for AI.

• Energy Infrastructure Advantage: AI models are extremely energy-intensive. China is leveraging its industrial policy to build out a massive, clean energy infrastructure that could sustain this growth.

• Embodied AI and Manufacturing: China is focusing heavily on ‘embodied AI’—AI integrated into physical infrastructure and robots—in its vast manufacturing sector, with a state commitment to diffuse this technology throughout society. This provides a real-world scale advantage.

• Global Inequality: The current geopolitical dynamic suggests that AI could exacerbate economic disparities between nations. While high-income economies show high AI exposure (nearly 60% of jobs affected), low-income countries have lower exposure (around 26% of jobs affected). If AI adoption remains concentrated in wealthier nations, the productivity gains will be unequally distributed, risking poorer countries falling further behind.

Final Conclusionary Points

• The Skill Premium: The impact of AI is not a level playing field for workers. Jobs with a high complementarity to AI (where AI boosts human performance) are more likely to see productivity and wage boosts, while those with low complementarity are at higher risk of substitution. The future labour market may become further polarised into a high-skilled elite and a large underclass of service workers.

• Governance and Ethics: The quotes focus heavily on economics, but the conclusion should acknowledge that the long-term success of the AI transition is also dependent on policy and governance.

@TigerStars

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