A new study by Goldman Sachs Research has a dire warning for the future.
"AI can potentially automate tasks that account for 25% of all work hours in the U.S. This significant exposure has raised concerns around widespread and permanent job loss, sparking fears of a 'job apocalypse' or 'humans going the way of horses.'"
Sounds a lot like Ghostbusters, "Cats and Dogs. Living together. MASS HYSTERIA!"
Other, more sober-minded estimates are still worth getting concerned about. The World Economic Forum believes that 170 million jobs will be created and 92 million lost for a net gain of 78 million jobs. Management consultants at McKinsey suggests 14% of the global workforce may need to change occupational categories by 2030.
Axios reports that "Anthropic revealed this week that one of its AI tools, Claude Code, built a new product, Cowork, which allows others to use AI for workplace tasks normally done by humans — creating presentations, summarizing meetings, consolidating research."
Anthropic conducted a study that rejects the Ghostbusters scenario and adds a dash of hope for many white-collar workers.
Axios reports that the Anthropic report "offers a detailed examination of AI use, looking at an anonymized sample from 2 million real Claude conversations that took place last year on its free and pay-for services."
Anthropic's own founder and CEO has warned that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and push unemployment as high as 10–20% within one to five years.
But the study out today, from his own company, paints a more nuanced picture. And many other researchers find that, like with past technological revolutions, AI is more likely to create jobs than destroy them.
"The future is uncertain," says Peter McCrory, Anthropic's head of economics.
Zoom in: AI is reshaping how people work, not if people work.
Put another way: AI takes over parts of people's jobs.
49% of jobs can now use AI in at least a quarter of the tasks involved — up from 36% in early 2025, Anthropic found.
Indeed, every major technological breakthrough of the last 100 years has seen some jobs disappear but a whole lot more be created. Sure, taxi drivers, truck drivers, bus drivers, and many delivery people will eventually have to find other work. Many entry-level white-collar workers will be replaced as AI improves and grows more sophisticated.
However, I expect jobs we can't even imagine at companies not yet in existence will make some of this worry about AI taking jobs disappear.
This future is possible as long as the politicians, unions, and Luddites keep their fears and anxieties from curtailing or even halting the world that AI has the potential to create.
So far, the job market is pretty good by historical standards, with unemployment at 4.4%.
But it's been slowing. Many CEOs will tell you privately that they plan to run their companies with far fewer people in the years ahead. They're slower to fill open jobs and quicker to determine what roles AI will soon displace.
Most new technologies create more jobs than they destroy over time. But there's often pain in between.
Both major parties are oddly silent about what to do about the possible jobs inferno that seems to be coming. Among the reasons they express privately: Policy experts are at a loss ... It's not here yet ... Politicians are reluctant to poke the bear on a subject that makes people queasy.
You could sit in a room and make a huge dent in many problems if you were willing to make hard enough choices. Not this one.
"I think just the opposite," Donald Trump said when told many Americans are concerned that AI will take their jobs. "I think AI is going to be a tremendous job producer. I think that we have so many jobs. My biggest problem isn't taking the jobs. It's that we don't have enough people to fill the jobs, and that's where robots come in."
Let's hope he's right.
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