This is a column about AI. My fiancé works at Anthropic. See my full ethics disclosure here.

One of my main preoccupations this year has been the extent to which artificial intelligence threatens jobs, either now or in the future. Our Platformer podcast miniseries took the question to seven experts with a variety of perspectives, and the debate ended mostly in optimism — with most guests casting doubt on the idea of mass long-term unemployment, even as they acknowledged that AI will likely cause most jobs to change dramatically.

Conversations around AI and jobs can often feel slippery in part because the data we have on the subject is mediocre. Jobs are rarely destroyed for any one reason; corporations often have an incentive to lie about why they’ve eliminated a job; and much of the data we’ve seen this year can seem contradictory.

For these reasons, I took note this morning of “We Must Act Now,” a statement signed by more than 200 economists, AI researchers, and Nobel laureates. Other signers included executives from Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI. The statement is short enough that I can reproduce it here in full:

AI may become radically more powerful over the next 10 years.

This could drive an unprecedented transformation of our economy, larger than the Industrial Revolution, but unfolding over a vastly shorter time frame. It could bring risks, including large-scale job displacement, as well as opportunities such as major gains in living standards.

Economists, policymakers and technology leaders must act now to understand the economics of transformative AI and to build the incentives, guardrails, and institutions needed to steer AI in a direction that complements humans and benefits society.

Like most statements that 200 people are willing to sign, this one can read as fairly anodyne. But as Ben Casselman notes in the New York Times, among other things it represents a cohering view among economists that the risks of large-scale disruption are growing:

Notably, the list of signatories includes some people who have in the past been prominent A.I. skeptics, including Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson, professors at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who won the Nobel in economics in 2024.

“There’s been a notable change in the profession,” said Erik Brynjolfsson, a Stanford economist who helped organize the statement. He said his goal was to get economists and policymakers to take the disruptive potential of A.I. more seriously.

“I still see a big gap there, a big mismatch, and I’m kind of worried that we’re not going to be ready for the tsunami that’s coming,” he said.

The new statement comes a month after a Wall Street Journal survey of 16 leading economists found that half said AI would lead to no net change in jobs; five said it would lead to net losses, and just three said it would lead to net growth. Notably, China last week opted not to set a numerical target for the number of urban jobs it would create in the next five years — the first time it had not set a target since the 1990s.

At times like this I find it helpful to slow down and ask what we know for sure, what’s disputed, and what we might do about it. 

Start with what we know. One, there is no jobs crisis to date. “The occupational mix is not yet changing in ways that clearly align with the introduction of AI into the workforce” the Yale Budget Lab, a nonpartisan policy research center, reported in June. “Measures of AI usage show no connection to changes in employment or unemployment.”

Two, there’s growing evidence that AI is beginning to erode work — in particular, entry-level work. This month, Stanford’s Canaries Dashboard — another Brynjolfsson project — offered two relevant data points. (The data comes from ADP, a large provider of payroll services.)

The first is that jobs that are considered the most “exposed” to AI shrank 0.5 percent, while the least exposed grew 0.2 percent. The second is that early-career jobs shrank 2.7 percent this year, while jobs for mid-career workers (ages 35-40) grew 1.6 percent.

Those are small effect sizes, obviously — but directionally interesting. And they also help me make sense of the apparently contradictory data we sometimes see on jobs. 

Take, for example, a seemingly happy story about AI and jobs from last week: US job postings related to software development are up 15 percent since the launch of Claude Code in February 2025. Among those postings, 71 percent of the increase is for senior-level roles.

The implication is clear, and worrisome: employers are increasingly turning to AI systems to do the entry-level work that their junior workers once did. For the moment, that seems to be creating jobs for more senior workers. But what will happen should AI systems be able to do those tasks, too? 

Job losses often have multiple causes, and economists have cited interest-rate hikes, overhiring during the pandemic, and remote work as reasons that hiring is slow in some parts of the economy. Economists are also mystified by how AI could be significantly contributing to job losses when we don’t yet have measurable productivity gains.

And so when the signatories of this new letter say we “must act now,” what do they mean?

The letter doesn’t include any specific ask. Brynjolfsson told the Times that one of his highest priorities is getting better data. “The lack of reliable data has been a major obstacle for researchers in recent years,” Casselman notes, “with different measures telling conflicting stories about whether A.I. is leading to job losses and which workers will be most affected.”

The good news is that the US government has begun to think through some solutions: there is now bipartisan support for a sovereign wealth fund paid for by AI companies, for example.

But it may be prudent to develop an action plan before AI job loss becomes even more tangible. The labor economist Kathryn Anne Edwards has called for overhauling unemployment insurance and funding workers’ relocations when they lose their jobs. The Brookings Institution’s Molly Kinder has suggested ideas including wage insurance and government incentives for employers to hire younger workers.

All are worth consideration. Earlier this month I wrote that there is no AI jobs crisis yet — but that the warning signs are blinking yellow. That should be more than enough reason to do as the economists suggest, and come up with a plan for what happens when they start to turn red.

Following

Apple accuses OpenAI of stealing trade secrets

What happened: Apple sued OpenAI on Friday, accusing the AI giant of a coordinated scheme to steal hardware trade secrets in a bombshell legal filing. 

The ringleader of the effort, according to the lawsuit — Tang Tan, a 24-year Apple veteran who ran iPhone and Apple Watch design before becoming OpenAI’s Chief Hardware Officer. The suit contained a series of eyebrow-raising allegations: that Tan asked job candidates to bring components of unreleased devices to interviews, coached staff on evading Apple’s security, and fished for details on unreleased products.

It also accused Chang Liu, previously a senior systems electrical engineer at Apple for eight years, of failing to return his company laptop and using it to download confidential Apple technical documents.

Tan and Liu are among the more than 400 former Apple employees that now work at OpenAI, Apple noted in the lawsuit.

“This is the tip of the iceberg,” the suit said. “OpenAI’s nascent hardware business now rests on the shakiest of foundations, rotten to its core by its illegal reliance on misappropriated trade secrets.”

OpenAI spokesperson Drew Pusateri said the company had “no interest in other companies’ trade secrets. "We remain focused on building innovative technology that empowers people everywhere."

Why we’re following: Tech companies tend to want to call everything they do a trade secret, and there are aspects of Apple's suit that overreach in this direction. (Can a court really be bothered to care that Tan used Apple's secret codenames for its products in job interviews?)

Still, the evidence against Liu appears damning, and Tan has a lot to answer for, too. Reading the complaint, we were struck by one under-discussed allegation in particular: that OpenAI tricked one of Apple's partners into demonstrating the secret metal-finishing technique that Apple uses for its devices by telling the partner that Apple had given them its permission.

Barring a quick settlement, we expect Apple to use the discovery process to see just how high up the OpenAI org chart these tactics went. Did Sam Altman know what was going on here? Did Jony Ive?

At worst, Apple's lawsuit could pose a major roadblock to OpenAI’s development of new hardware. It also casts a shadow over the company's planned initial public offering of its stock.

In the meantime, add this one to the column of evidence that suggests OpenAI is getting weird again. The good news for the company is that its latest release, GPT-5.6, seems excellent. But all the turmoil around the company can't be helping.

What people are saying: 

Ben Thompson argues that, Liu's actions aside, the lawsuit reads like whining from a company that lost the AI race. Employees "are being told loud and clear that Apple doesn’t just think it owns your laptop, but also your mind and knowledge," he writes. "I think it mostly stinks."

M.G. Siegler wondered what it meant for Altman. Altman "is no stranger to ... discovery, but can he really sit through more depositions with more of his emails and text messages shown to the world casting him in an embarrassing (or worse) light? It just depends, I guess! The extent to which he's involved in any of the above – and clearly he's been front and center with OpenAI's hardware efforts alongside Ive – could be the latest in a string of not great situations to be in, to put it mildly."

As for Altman, he responded to a user who had tweeted (without tagging him) that Altman "is terrified of Apple." "i am not afraid of apple," Altman posted," but i have tremendous respect for them. s-tier company."

—Casey Newton and Lindsey Choo

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