Anthropic Assesses the Impact of AI on Employment

Anthropic Evaluates the Impact of AI on Employment

The use of AI continues to spread across various sectors, raising concerns about its impact on jobs. To address these questions, Anthropic published details of its new method for assessing the exposure of different professions last March. This method is based on theoretical information as well as real data derived from the analysis of Claude and the API from Anthropic.

While some analyses focus on AI's ability to replace humans in certain tasks, Anthropic highlights the potential gaps between the theoretical capabilities of artificial intelligence and its actual uses.

• “Some theoretically possible tasks may not appear in practice due to model limitations.
• Others may be slow to diffuse because of legal constraints, specific software requirements, human verification steps, or other obstacles,” states the competitor of OpenAI.

Anthropic's new calculation method thus takes into account both the theoretical capacity of AI to automate tasks in a profession and the data on the actual use of its products. The graph presented by the company illustrates the gap between the theoretical capabilities of AI for a profession (in blue) and its actual exposure to automation by artificial intelligence (in red).

The Most Exposed Professions, According to Anthropic

“Our goal is to establish a method to measure the impact of AI on employment and to regularly reassess these analyses,” clarifies Anthropic. The company admits that this approach will not capture all the channels through which AI could reshape the labor market. However, it has already published a list of the most exposed professions according to this methodology.

• At the top of the list are computer programmers.
• They are followed by customer service representatives.

Anthropic also mentions the existence of professions with the least risk, representing 30% of workers, whose tasks appear too rarely in the data used. This group includes professions such as cook, motorcycle mechanic, lifeguard, and bartender.

Anthropic hopes that with its new method, it will be possible to reliably identify future economic disruptions “before significant effects manifest.” The company explains that economic disruptions related to the use of AI may not be abrupt, like those caused by COVID, but rather similar to the changes brought about by the internet or trade with China.

In summary, to better measure the impact of AI on employment, Anthropic reveals a new calculation method that takes into account not only the theoretical performance of AI but also its actual use in automating tasks. The analysis is expected to evolve, but Anthropic has already published a list of the 10 most exposed professions.