The biggest name of technology is what AI means for white-collar jobs

Mankind CEO Dario Amody began the conversation by warning him about how fast the large-scale language model is moving forward.

“As producers of this technology, we have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what's coming,” Amodei told Axios. “I don't think this is on people's radar.”

Amodei said it might seem strange for AI companies to warn about their own technologies.

“Well, if they're right?” Amodei said.

Openai CEO Sam Altman said some jobs would disappear, but society would adapt.

“And the hard part about this is that it will happen faster than the previous technology changes, but I think new jobs will be better.

Altman said that even if it is true that such a large number of jobs are about to be wiped out, “social inertia” will not allow it.

“And half of that work will disappear in a year, two, five years, etc. — I think it's just a matter of – I don't think that's how society actually works,” he said. “Even if this technology isn't ready for it, the inertia of society that will help in this case is like there's a lot of mass out there.”

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang did not write words.

“I barely agree with anything he says,” fans told reporters about Amoedi's views at Vivatec 2025 in Paris. “He thinks AI is very scary, but only they should do it.”

Huang said he was much more optimistic.

“If you want to do things safely and responsibly, you should do it openly,” Huang said, comparing the development of AI to medical research. “I don't think AI is that expensive. Do you think AI will change jobs? It will change everyone – it has changed mine.”

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff said he has not seen evidence of such a near-obstruction turbulence.

“That's not the way I see AI,” Benioff said in a recent stage interview with Good Global Summit at 2025 AI. “Maybe they have AI, I don't have one. But with the AI I have, it wouldn't be a massive layoff of white-collar workers, that's a radical augmentation of the workforce.”

Benioff encouraged people to “throw their fears” about AI.

“When I'm talking to customers, I don't hear them say, 'Yeah, now I'm laying out these people, so I think we somehow need to throw away the fear of what that means.”

Ford CEO Jim Farley said he was looking at the issue first.

“Artificial intelligence is going to replace literal half of all white-collar workers in the United States,” Farley said he was appearing at the Aspen Idea Festival.

Farley said he is concerned that much of the American education system focuses on four-year degrees rather than on transactions.

Mark Cuban said the situation would be the opposite of Amody's warning.

“Someone needs to remind the CEO that at some point there is a secretary that is over 2m in office dictation. There were also other employees. They were the original white collar displacement,” Cuban wrote in a Bluesky post.

“New companies with new jobs will come from AI and increase total employment,” he continued.

Like Altman, Openai's COO Brad LightCap doesn't see the sky falling.

“There is no evidence of this,” Lightcap said in a “hard fork” podcast taping. “And Dario is a scientist, and I hope he takes an evidence-based approach to these types of things.”

LightCap said all technology will change the job market.

“Every time you get a platform shift, you get a change in the job market. In 1900, 40% of people worked in agriculture. That's 2% today. Microsoft Excel is probably the biggest job of the 20th century.”

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said AI is already changing its workflow. He said that would soon lead to a few jobs declines.

“As we deploy more generative AI and agents, we should change the way we work,” Jassy said in a note posted on Amazon's website. “There are fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people are doing other types of work.”

Klarna CEO Sebastian Siemiatkowski said AI could cause a recession due to the vast number of job openings.

“I don't want to be one of them,” Siemiatkovsky said of the CEO who downplays the change that AI brings. “I want to be honest, I want to be fair and I want to convey what I'm seeing, I want to make sure society can start preparing.”