Artificial intelligence is accelerating even as I write this (and yes, this is me writing). If anyone tells you they know how this is going to turn out, you should move on to the next expert. No one knows how this is going to turn out.

Leaders in the AI field certainly expect it to become ubiquitous. The New York Times columnist Ezra Klein, in an article with the (somewhat) comforting title “Why the A.I. Job Apocalypse (Probably) Won’t Happen,” cited a March Quinnipiac poll finding 70% percent of Americans think that AI will lead to fewer job opportunities for human beings, up from 56% a year ago.

Dario Amodei, chief executive of Anthropic, estimates that half of all entry-level white collar jobs will dissolve within the next five years, Klein notes, and he quotes Mustafa Suleyman, chief executive of Microsoft AI, saying most white-collar work will “be fully automated by an AI within the next 12 to 18 months.”

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