Prime Highlights
- Amodei said the key challenge ahead is ensuring everyone shares in AI’s benefits, not just driving growth.
- Anthropic proposed universal basic income and equity-sharing mechanisms if AI permanently reduces labour demand.
Key Facts
- Anthropic’s $200 million Economic Futures Research Fund will back research trials and evaluation of promising public policies.
- Anthropic was founded in 2021 by Dario Amodei and co-founders who previously split from OpenAI to focus on AI safety.
Background
Anthropic has announced a $200 million investment to study artificial intelligence’s impact on jobs and the economy, joining a broader industry push to address the technology’s disruption to the labour market.
The company announced the funding alongside a set of policy proposals and an essay by chief executive Dario Amodei, in which he argued that AI could produce larger and longer-lasting labour market disruptions than previous technological shifts. He said the key challenge ahead would not be driving growth, but ensuring everyone shares in the benefits.
The $200 million will go toward an Economic Futures Research Fund, which will back research trials and policy evaluation on approaches Anthropic considers promising. The company is also launching a $150 million national fellowship programme to help early-career professionals extend AI’s benefits to communities across the United States.
Amodei proposed tracking AI-driven job displacement through better data collection, introducing pro-employment policy incentives, and establishing mechanisms such as a universal basic income if displacement permanently reduces labour demand. He suggested financing such measures through taxes on relevant companies or by raising the capital gains tax.
Anthropic’s policy framework outlined government responses to three levels of AI-driven unemployment, covering scenarios where the national rate reaches five per cent, ten per cent, and an unspecified unprecedented level. The latest reported unemployment rate stood at 4.3 per cent.
The proposals also recommended that the government be able to block AI models posing significant risks, and that safety standards for AI should match the rigour applied to aviation regulation.
The announcement follows rival OpenAI outlining goals around broadly sharing AI’s gains, with its chief executive recently meeting lawmakers to discuss a public wealth fund backed by AI company equity.