Surely a bot can’t spend a full morning deleting emails and call it a day by 3pm…or can it? The billionaire CEO of Anthropic, Dario Amodei, told Axios this week that AI could eliminate 50% of all white-collar, entry-level roles within the next one to five years, potentially pushing unemployment rates up 10% to 20%.

Those are strong words, especially coming from the guy who just rolled out the wildly powerful Claude Opus 4, which threatened to blackmail an engineer to keep from being deleted, in a possible éclaircissement for the tech. Amodei also urged the US government to start levying taxes on the industry that he claims will exacerbate income inequality as AI companies (like his) rake in buckets of cash:

• Amodei told Axios that the government should look into “taxes on people like me, and maybe specifically on the AI companies.”
• He even floated a “token tax” that would require AI companies to pay 3% of their revenue from each use of their models to the government, which could then reinvest it in some way, such as into retraining programs for workers.

Is he for real?

Critics immediately pointed out that “white-collar bloodbath” rhetoric is just as much a part of the AI hype machine as Studio Ghibli memes. Mark Cuban said Amodei needed to chill, pointing to past technological advancements and automation pushes that displaced workers like secretaries for a while, but ultimately created new industries and jobs.

Still, the fear of AI taking your job may be warranted…especially if you’re just entering the workforce. Recent college grad unemployment rose to 5.8% during Q1, the highest it’s been since 2021, according to a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. And unemployment has spiked in technical fields that have seen rapid advancements in AI.

• Earlier this month, Microsoft announced it was laying off 3% of its staff, including many engineers.
• Cybersecurity company CrowdStrike cut 5% of its workforce (500 jobs), saying AI was reshaping the industry.

But AI may not be ready for prime time. A few weeks ago, Klarna reversed course and started hiring humans again after pivoting to AI customer service agents.—MM

At long last, Taylor Swift owns the rights to all of her music. The singer, songwriter, and star of Cats announced yesterday that she bought back her catalog from private equity firm Shamrock Capital.

Financial terms were not disclosed, but Swift reportedly shelled out ~$360 million, which is close to what Shamrock paid to acquire the library in 2020. But ending the drama was probably priceless:

• Swift lost control of her first six albums in 2019, when her original label, Big Machine Records, sold the rights to her former manager, Scooter Braun, with whom she’s been fighting ever since. Braun sold the masters to Shamrock a year later.
• Since 2019, Swift has rerecorded four albums and labeled them (Taylor’s Version) in an attempt to reclaim ownership and diminish the value of the original recordings.

The move seemingly worked, with the new versions of Fearless and Red outstreaming the originals, per Billboard. As for the other two albums, Swift said she didn’t plan to release a rerecorded Reputation but has finished rerecording her self-titled debut album.

Bottom line: Shamrock still made a fortune while it owned Swift’s first six albums—Billboard estimates it turned a profit of around $100 million over that time. Worry not for Swift, as she reportedly became a billionaire in 2023.—DL

Celebratory zero-proof beer bongs on Tom Holland: Non-alcoholic beer is poised to become the second-largest beer category by volume worldwide this year, chugging past ale but still miles behind lager, the market research firm IWSR said this week.

Mainstream culture is increasingly embracing buzz-free. According to IWSR:

• The quantity of NA beers being sold worldwide grew by 9% last year, while the overall beer market’s volume shrank by 1%.
• The NA beer category is projected to continue growing at an annual rate of 8% through 2029, as ale is expected to decline by 2% annually during the same period.

Though it’s soon to be No. 2, NA only represents ~2% of the global beer market. Lager commands somewhere between 76% and 92%, according to most estimates.

In the US, sales of zero-proof alcohol surged 26% in the year leading up to the Super Bowl, largely due to the growing popularity of NA beer. And that was mostly before the outgoing Surgeon General called for cancer warnings on alcohol in January.

Major beer brands have embraced the trend, but among beer-enjoyers who seek improved health and wellness (many Gen Zers and millennials), industry veterans aren’t leading—they’re jockeying for second place. The top-selling NA beer brand is Athletic Brewing, which was founded in 2018 and holds almost 20% share of Uncle Sam’s NA beer market. Celebrities including Holland, Dwyane Wade, and Dax Shepard are also trying to tap in with their own brands.—ML