Warnings that AI is coming for your job have become a familiar refrain in tech. OpenAI founder Sam Altman says AI could replace 40% of jobs, while Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, warns that AI could wipe out jobs across several industries. The tone is urgent and the conclusion implied: disruption is inevitable.
What’s missing from this conversation is not concern for workers, it’s accountability for capital.
This fear-laden narrative is coming from the very CEOs who have received billions of dollars in funding – without the return on investment to justify the scale of those bets. Even as they forecast workforce disruptions and the end of software engineering, they’re still hiring thousands of engineers. The contradiction is hard to ignore.
AI is not coming for your paycheck. But it is challenging the economics of software as we’ve known it.
Software and data stocks have plunged by many billions of dollars following the release of new tools such Anthropic’s Claude Cowork and OpenAI’s Codex. These systems can now write software and launch programs without users ever learning to code. They can also handle data management, review contracts and perform a wide range of industry-specific tasks. Compared to traditional software economics – expensive, per-seat licensing – this shift matters.
