Dario Amodei says Anthropic won’t need many software engineers soon, not sure if AI will create more jobs
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei discusses the potential consequences of AI on the job market. He also said Anthropic itself won’t need as many software engineers as it currently does.
AI is changing everything. And especially, the job market. More companies are relying on AI to improve productivity in exchange for fewer headcount. Now, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said that further disruption was inevitable.
While there are already concerns about the future of software engineers, Anthropic’s Cloud Cowork has also raised fears that SaaS companies like TCS and Infosys may be completely replaced by AI in the future.
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“I think there is going to be some disruption that is not related to any particular company or particular industry,” Dario Amodei told CNBC TV18 during the India AI Impact Summit. He added, “But we are concerned with technology in general.”
Anthropic may soon need fewer software engineers
Dario acknowledged that AI firms may also see a time when they won’t need a large workforce. He explained, “(In the future) even within Anthropic, we will need fewer software engineers than we do today, because models are better at automating end-to-end software engineering.”
Now, this may seem like a major crisis, but Amodei says new employment opportunities will arise. “There’s this notion of a forward deployed engineer, someone who has technical skills but who works with customers to enable technical systems,” the Anthropic chief said. According to Amodei, the AI startup may need many more such personnel in the future as the company grows.
He added, “This is a potential example where one thing goes away, you know, and but another door opens up to take its place.”
But Dario Amodei can’t guarantee
Although this sounds great, the jobs taken over by AI are being replaced by new jobs. But it seems even Amodei is not sure this influx of new roles will be enough to offset the huge number of job losses.
In recent months, companies like Amazon, Microsoft, TCS, Accenture and many others have laid off thousands of employees to focus more on AI. And filling this gap can be difficult.
“I can’t guarantee that more jobs that are being destroyed will be created. We have to make it real,” Amodei said.
When Dario was asked about fears among SaaS companies about the cloud’s abilities to automate work, he responded, “We’re not trying to replace existing industries.”
