Anthropic just proposed taxing itself to pay for the jobs its AI destroys
Anthropic on Wednesday joined growing calls for the artificial intelligence industry to find ways to cushion people from the technology’s disruptions, announcing an initial $200 million investment to research AI’s impact on jobs and the economy. Alongside new policy proposals from the maker of the Claude chatbot, Anthropic CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei published an essay on his personal website that expanded on his position that the government should promise economic support for those financially impacted by AI. The technology could produce much larger disruptions to the labor market than previous technological advancements, Amodei wrote, and those disruptions could last longer. “The key challenge in such a world won’t be incentivizing growth, but finding a way for everyone to share in the benefits,” Amodei wrote. The announcement comes on the heels of Anthropic rival OpenAI on Monday outlining goals that included ensuring gains from the technology are “widely shared.” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently met with Sen. Bernie Sanders to discuss a plan for the public to take an ownership stake in artificial intelligence companies like OpenAI, using their stock to create a public wealth fund that would spread the fortune generated by AI behemoths. In the Oval Office on Wednesday, President Donald Trump told reporters that he will soon meet with executives from several leading AI companies to discuss “giving back” to the public. “We’re talking about giving back something to the public, and if we do that, the public will become very rich,” Trump said. “I think they’ll do that, and I think it’ll make it very popular.” In his essay, Amodei said he has warned of job displacement not because he is “trying to be a ‘prophet of doom’” but because he wants “both policymakers and the private sector to have the best chance to adapt and respond.” He proposed better data collection to track AI job displacement, pro-employment policy incentives to slow or reduce displa