A 'White-Collar Bloodbath' Doesn't Have to Be Our Fate

Instead of asking which future is coming, we should be asking which future we want.

- Tim Wu

There's been a lot of talk in recent weeks about a "white-collar bloodbath," a scenario in the near future in which many college-educated workers are replaced by artificial intelligence (AI) programmes that do their jobs faster and better.

Dr. Dario Amodei, the chief executive of the AI company Anthropic, recently predicted that half of entry-level positions in fields like law, consulting, and finance could meet this fate in just a few years.

Mr. Mark Zuckerberg, the chief executive of Meta, has predicted that AI will replace many of Meta's programmers within the next year or two.

Optimists push back with a different prediction, forecasting that AI will not replace white-collar workers but will rather serve as a tool that makes them more productive. Mr. Jensen Huang, the chief executive of the computer chipmaker Nvidia, has argued that "you're not going to lose your job to an AI, but you're going to lose your job to someone who uses AI."

Both sides in this debate are making the same mistake: They treat the question as one of fate rather than choice.

Instead of asking which future is coming, we should be asking which future we want: one in which humans are replaced or only augmented?

The decision will depend on companies like Anthropic and OpenAI and whether they want to build ethical, sustainable technologies—as they say they do. In that case, they should design AI that works hand in hand with humans, rather than trying to build autonomous systems to replace us.

Equally, if not more important, are the employers who adopt AI systems: If they really want productivity gains, they too must embrace AI programmes that augment rather than replace.

The distinction between augmentation and replacement can be subtle. Any technology—from the stone axe onwards—replaces some human work in the course of augmenting it.