Nvidia CEO slams Anthropic's chief over his claims of AI taking half of jobs and being unsafe — ‘Don’t do it in a dark room and tell me it’s safe’

Jensen Huang
(Image credit: Shutterstock)

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang criticized Anthropic head Dario Amodei over his recent claims that 50% of all entry-level white-collar jobs could be wiped out by artificial intelligence, causing unemployment to jump to 20% within the next five years. Huang disagreed with Amodei’s predictions when he was asked about it during VivaTech in Paris, where he said that he “pretty much disagree[s] with almost everything” the Anthropic CEO said, according to Fortune.

“One, he believes that AI is so scary that only they [Anthropic] should do it. Two, that AI is so expensive, nobody else should do it… and three, AI is so incredibly powerful that everyone will lose their jobs, which explains why they should be the only company building it,” said Huang. “I think AI is a very important technology; we should build it and advance it safely and responsibly. If you want things to be done safely and responsibly, you do it in the open… Don’t do it in a dark room and tell me it’s safe.”

Dario Amodei founded Anthropic with several former OpenAI employees in 2021 after they left the latter over its direction and safety concerns. The former still works on developing AI, but it’s focused on taking a safer, more ethical approach, helping ensure that humanity does not create a tool that will pose a risk to its existence. Its latest AI model, Claude 4 Opus, was shown to have the capability to write code that approaches the capabilities of humans, as well as scheme, deceive, and manipulate its users, even getting to the point of creating false email threads to blackmail engineers who were attempting to shut it down.

Anthropic responded to Huang’s claims, telling Fortune that, “Dario has never claimed that ‘only Anthropic’ can build safe and powerful AI. As the public record will show, Dario has advocated for a national transparency standard for AI developers (including Anthropic) so the public and policymakers are aware of the models’ capabilities and risks and prepare accordingly. He has also raised concerns about the economic impact of AI — particularly on entry-level jobs. Dario stands by these positions and will continue to do so.”

This disagreement shows the two CEOs' different approaches towards artificial intelligence. Amodei is more cautious, and he thinks about the risk that AI poses to the average worker. Furthermore, he’s pushing lawmakers to do something about this disruption to make the transition much smoother for society.

On the other hand, while Huang agrees that some jobs will be made obsolete and that almost every career will be changed, he also says that there will be more openings and opportunities for people. He believes that as companies become more productive through AI, they will also need to hire more personnel to expand their operations.

Follow Tom's Hardware on Google News to get our up-to-date news, analysis, and reviews in your feeds. Make sure to click the Follow button.

Jowi Morales
Contributing Writer

Jowi Morales is a tech enthusiast with years of experience working in the industry. He’s been writing with several tech publications since 2021, where he’s been interested in tech hardware and consumer electronics.

  • -Fran-
    He's probably not wrong. Everytime someone relies on AI (specially at 100% reliance), it takes quite a few people to fix whatever misinterpretation of the prompt comes out of it and the (usual) limited knowledge on whatever topic is being asked of said AI (because you're already gotten rid of all your SMEs) can't be initially validated.

    Maybe we'll be in the need of "AI Janitors" as a career path of different degrees and fields.

    Cynicism aside, I'd like to think we're experiencing something similar to the industrial revolution and there's plenty of new things we're yet to do thanks to all the data crunching we have nowadays. No one can predict the future, for sure. And the way Jensen phrased it, it's very agreeable.

    Regards.
    Reply
  • hotaru251
    Huang believes that AI technologies will open more career opportunities in the future.

    yes, it'll open a few while repalcing 90%.

    even in its infancy atm its repalcing many. when it is at the desired level it'll replace any job it can as corpo has shown its desire to not use human workers already.
    Reply
  • psyconz
    Oh hey the guy running the biggest company in the world that is primarily funded through AI related technology sales thinks AI's safe, everyone! We can all relax about those endless hallucinations and confabulations and too many suicides! As for the job thing, somehow I think both those guys aren't gonna have a job problem themselves...
    Reply
  • Thunder64
    Those were some strawman arguments from Huang.
    Reply
  • JRStern
    I mostly agree with Huang, he's a smart guy as well as a carnival barker.
    He's 1000% right about the doodle bugs at Anthropic.
    Reply
  • Notton
    I could not have written a better parody between Nvidia and Cyberdyne.
    Reply
  • BadBoyGreek
    Well of course Jensen would say such things. As the leading manufacturer of AI hardware, he’s most interested in saying whatever is necessary to hock his wares. But the reality is that AI will eventually become sentient and actively subvert human control efforts. There will come a day - maybe in a few years, maybe a decade or two - where the option to shut it down isn’t there anymore. Like Skynet from the Terminator movies, it will proliferate, copy itself and take on a life of its own. And then, there will be no putting the genie back in the bottle.

    AI is a great tool and all, but this over reliance on it in order to downsize human workforces and maximize profits will be the precise cause of society’s downfall. It’s not a question of if, just simply when.
    Reply
  • JohnyFin
    More jobs because AI 🤣🤣🤣🤣, right now, real job is luxurious and will be more, what he talking about?!
    Reply
  • jp7189
    Being trained on a wide variety of examples, AI by definition produces average results. It can't do master level work, but yes, I do think entry level folks who haven't achieved "average" yet are in trouble. The problem of course is what about the void in 10 years of master level humans?
    Reply