Jensen Huang and Dario Amodei disagree on AI and jobs; chatbots keep telling people what they want to hear; Amsterdam experiments with AI in welfare; 25 European startups aim to change the world

Anthropic plans "aggressive" expansion in Europe; AI is changing how employees are trained; Meta creates new lab to pursue superintelligence; is sovereign AI political branding or digital colonialism?

Jun 13, 2025

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While I’m pretty sure that the Venn diagram of things that Karen Hao and executives from the AI industry agree on is generally small, this week we saw it getting a tad wider in real time.

In her new book Empire of AI, Hao explains that AI boomers and doomers do not sit, as often is portrayed in the media, at polar opposites of a spectrum; rather, she likes to think of them as two sides of the same coin. That’s because both groups fervently believe in two ideas: AGI is inevitable and it is coming soon. The only difference is that the first group believes it will lead to a utopia while the second thinks it will wipe out humankind. Therefore, boomers and doomers are in race to build AGI because they think it will ensure its outcomes are abundant or safe, respectively.

Enter Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, who was asked during a press briefing at GTC Paris, what he thought about Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recent remarks that AI will destroy half of all entry-level white collar jobs and cause a spike of 10-20% in unemployment. This claim drew a spirited response from the usually calm Huang: he "pretty much disagree[d] with almost everything" Amodei had to say.

Huang accused Amodei and Anthropic of fostering fear, suggesting the AI safety lab promotes a narrative that this technology is so dangerous only their closed-door development methods are trustworthy. "Don’t do it in a dark room and tell me it’s safe," Huang argued. Anthropic quickly pushed back, clarifying that Amodei's intent wasn't to monopolize AI safety but to advocate transparency and cautious progress.

Or, as AOC put it last week, “the girls are fighting.”

Just like Huang, I believe artificial intelligence will transform jobs, and that ultimately we will experience job creation, not destruction. History, after all, shows productivity breeds employment.

That doesn’t mean I’m blind to the fears that remain, and for good reason. A report from British fintech Ravio highlights for example how AI is already affecting the job market, creating new roles and changing skill demands. Three interesting stats stood out in relation to white collar jobs: while roles with titles containing “AI” have (unsurprisingly) seen an increase of 7x in 2025 so far, administrative roles have plummeted by 35% and entry level hiring has dropped by 73% across the board.

So should we panic? The answer is not exactly that black and white, considering my experience at Ocado, a pioneer in automating grocery logistics. Since its inception in 2000, Ocado grappled with monumental logistical challenges: perishable goods, multi-temperature storage, and zero margin for error.

Technology was not just helpful, it was essential because it solved a very real problem: rather than having workers walk miles around a facility picking groceries from shelves (a concept called dark stores), the automated solutions inside Ocado’s warehouses brought those groceries to shoppers sitting inside picking stations. Initially, semi-automated warehouses with conveyor belts and shuttles improved efficiency. However, scaling demanded a radical approach, leading to the development of a sophisticated grid with hundreds of automated bots.

Whenever I took reporters for tours of the Ocado warehouse, the conversation inevitably led to questions about job losses, noting fewer human pickers were needed compared to what they saw in dark stores. But what this line of questioning always missed was the deeper question: were these truly the jobs we should be preserving?

Take healthcare in the UK, for instance. The NHS budget threatens to consume nearly half of government expenditure within a decade, and worker turnover rates in health and social care jobs remain alarmingly high (36-44%, according to some estimates) due to demanding conditions. Rather than mourn job displacement in monotonous and physically taxing roles, shouldn't we leverage AI and automation to enhance job quality and sustainably address critical sectors like healthcare or retail?

Building on this point, Ali Ghodsi, CEO of Databricks, told reporters this week that "people underestimate how hard it is to completely automate a task" and that humans will continue to work for a long time because they add a level of supervision and accountability to the decisions made by artificial intelligence.

AI will indeed transform white collar and entry level jobs. Yet, rather than focusing solely on the loss, we can use it as an opportunity to reimagine work, elevating human roles, not merely replacing them.

If the past is any indication, the future isn’t about fewer jobs but more about better jobs, where humans thrive alongside intelligent automation.

And now, here are this week’s news:

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