Dario Amodei warns AI will kill entry-level jobs, Box CEO says it will actually open more engineering roles

As AI tools become more capable and widely used, top tech leaders are split on their impact, with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warning of heavy losses in entry-level jobs while Box CEO Aaron Levie argues the same technology could create fresh demand for skilled professionals.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei just recently stirred the debate around AI and jobs, warning that AI could wipe out a large share of entry-level white-collar roles in the coming years. But almost at the same time, Aaron Levie, CEO of Box, has offered a sharply different view, arguing that AI may actually create more demand for skilled engineers and domain experts rather than shrinking opportunities.

Amodei’s concerns come at a moment when the job market is already showing signs of strain. Fresh data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics released in early February showed that job openings in the US fell to 6.54 million at the end of December, the lowest level since September 2020. The figures added weight to Amodei’s warning that AI-driven disruption may be arriving faster than many expect.

Only weeks earlier, Amodei had laid out his thinking in a 20,000-word essay titled The Adolescence of Technology. In it, he made one of his most direct predictions yet, writing, “AI will disrupt 50 per cent of entry-level white-collar jobs over 1–5 years, while also thinking we may have AI that is more capable than everyone in only 1–2 years.” For a labour market already facing uncertainty, the statement landed heavily.

Amodei, who co-founded Anthropic in 2021, has repeatedly argued that the speed of AI progress sets it apart from past technological changes. “The pace of progress in AI is much faster than for previous technological revolutions,” he wrote, adding that this speed could make adaptation “unusually painful” for workers. According to him, the challenge is not just about specific roles disappearing, but about how quickly people may be forced to rethink careers altogether.

In the same essay, Amodei described AI as something far broader than task-specific automation. He warned that the technology is acting as a “general labor substitute for humans,” capable of touching professions across “law to finance to consulting.”

However, not everyone in the tech industry agrees with Amodei’s bleak outlook. Writing on X, Box CEO Aaron Levie argued that higher productivity from AI could flip the equation in several professions. He suggested that when AI tools allow experts to increase their output “by an order of magnitude,” demand for those experts may actually rise rather than fall.