AI safety researcher Roman Yampolskiy warns that artificial intelligence may lead to 99% unemployment by the end of the decade.

When OpenAI introduced ChatGPT in late 2022, its capacity to create code, hold discussions, and draft documents caused it to take off. Soon after, other major rivals like Google, Meta, Anthropic, and others entered the AI race with their own large language models (LLMs), which automate several jobs and assist humans in their work.

However, AI is also increasing the possibility of completely replacing human labor in the interim. Millions of people's jobs are already changing as a result of the technology, and in certain sectors, it has begun to completely replace labor. This change will grow increasingly worrisome, according to AI safety researcher Roman Yampolskiy, who thinks AI may result in 99 percent unemployment by the end of this decade.

Artificial general intelligence (AGI), or computers with human-level intelligence, might be developed as early as 2027, according to Yampolskiy, a computer science professor at the University of Louisville who is well-known for his work on AI safety. He thinks it would be a short journey from there to widespread automation of jobs. First, everything on a computer will be automated, Yampolskiy stated in an interview with The Diary of a CEO Podcast. He then believes that humanoid robots are perhaps five years behind. Therefore, all physical labor can be automated in five years.

This timescale would put humanity on track for a complete employment market collapse by 2030, according to Yampolskiy. "We are staring at a world where unemployment is at an all-time high," he remarked. I'm not referring to the alarming 10% unemployment rate, but rather the 99 percent.