Two years ago the two most powerful people in AI told you your job was in danger.
This week, weeks before they take their companies public at valuations near a trillion dollars, both of them changed their tune.
Sam Altman now says he was “pretty wrong” and is “delighted to be wrong” about entry-level jobs disappearing. Dario Amodei, who once said AI could erase half of white-collar work, now describes it as a tool that just makes you more productive.
Maybe they were wrong before. Maybe they are managing a story for investors who prefer calm to chaos. I cannot read their minds and neither can you. Here is what I would not do. I would not let a reassuring headline from someone about to sell stock decide how you plan your own finances.
So run the numbers yourself instead. In my forthcoming book I call this the Income Vulnerability Audit. It is an honest look at how replaceable or compressible your income really is. Not how safe a CEO says it is. How exposed it actually is when you strip out the optimism.
The data is mixed. Layoffs blamed on AI have passed 115,000 this year. Broad employment numbers still look steady. Both things are true. The mixed picture is the point. It means nobody is coming to tell you the answer in time. You have to measure your own exposure before the market measures it for you.
When the people with the most to gain suddenly sound the most relaxed, that is not a reason to relax. It is a reason to check your own position.
More on this in my forthcoming book The Day After AGI.
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