Artificial intelligence could displace 18% of existing U.S. jobs within five years, according to Bridgewater Associates. The investment firm has warned that governments must prepare for the transition and spread AI’s gains to avoid wider social disruption.
The estimate appeared in an August 4 policy paper led by Greg Jensen and Nir Bar Dea. It concerns potential displacement of current roles, not an 18% unemployment rate. Bridgewater acknowledges that new jobs will emerge, with the scale of that offset uncertain.
In an August 27 discussion, Jensen said the firm compared AI’s capabilities with the tasks that make up jobs. He argued that better tools for deploying existing systems could drive substantial disruption even without further advances in the underlying models.
Bridgewater proposes taxing AI tokens to reduce the tax advantage of machine work over human labor. Revenue could help lower income taxes and finance stakes in AI companies that would be distributed to citizens, giving them a share of the upside.
The distribution question also runs through Anthropic’s scenarios, previously covered by AIstify. Those explore how stronger AI could raise economic output while putting pressure on knowledge workers, highlighting the difference between a richer economy and better outcomes for every worker.
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