Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has expressed strong disagreement with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s recent predictions regarding the impact of artificial intelligence on employment, particularly concerning entry-level white-collar jobs.
Speaking at the VivaTech conference in Paris, Huang challenged Amodei’s assertion that AI could automate up to half of all entry-level office roles within the next five years. “I pretty much disagree with almost everything” the fellow AI CEO says, Huang stated at a press briefing. Huang also criticized what he perceived as Amodei’s views on limiting AI development. “One, he believes that AI is so scary that only they should do it,” Huang said of Amodei. “Two, [he believes] 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.”
“I think AI is a very important technology; we should build it and advance it safely and responsibly,” Huang continued. “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.” Anthropic was co-founded in 2021 by Amodei and other former OpenAI employees with a stated focus on AI safety. The founding team reportedly left OpenAI due to disagreements over the direction and safety culture at the company.
An Anthropic spokesperson provided a statement to Fortune, clarifying their position: “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 can 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.” Amodei has publicly discussed potential existential risks associated with AI, including the possibility of humanity losing control of increasingly intelligent systems and the risk of advanced AI being weaponized for malicious purposes like creating bioweapons or engineering cyberattacks.
In a recent interview with Axios, Amodei predicted the automation of roughly 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs and urged lawmakers to prepare to protect livelihoods. Huang acknowledged that AI would change jobs but dismissed the potential for widespread job losses on the scale Amodei suggested. “Everybody’s jobs will be changed. Some jobs will be obsolete, but many jobs are going to be created … Whenever companies are more productive, they hire more people,” he argued.
Huang’s comments followed Nvidia’s GTC Paris conference. During the conference, Nvidia announced a partnership with French startup Mistral, part of Nvidia’s broader efforts to boost European computing capacity. Huang revealed plans for over 20 “AI factories” under development across Europe, assuring that the current GPU shortage faced by European researchers and startups would soon be resolved.
The Nvidia CEO also addressed the company’s advancements in quantum computing, highlighting Nvidia’s hybrid quantum-classical platform, CUDA-Q. Huang stated that quantum computing is reaching an “inflection point” and predicted that the technology could begin solving real-world problems within the next few years.
