Anthropic Projects 2030: AI to Make the U.S. Wealthier, But Capital Will Capture Most Gains

Beating AI News Flash: Anthropic has released an economic study simulating how AI could impact the U.S. economy by 2030. The study first sets parameters including how many jobs AI can perform and the rate of enterprise adoption, then calculates corresponding GDP, wages, and unemployment rates. In the most aggressive scenario, AI would affect approximately 30% of all economic tasks. U.S. GDP would be 32.4% higher than it would be without AI, but the unemployment rate for knowledge workers would rise to 17.9%, while the overall unemployment rate would reach 11.9%. Wages for knowledge workers would also drop by 11.5%. Changes in income distribution are also significant: the share of labor income would fall from 60% to 45.2%, while capital income would rise to 54.8%. Although the economy would expand by nearly one-third, total labor income would only increase by 0.5%, whereas capital income would surge by 81.4%. However, under a set of less aggressive assumptions, the results would be far more moderate. Typical responses from U.S. public surveys align more closely with the middle scenario, projecting GDP to be around 10% higher by 2030 than it would be without AI, with an overall unemployment rate of approximately 5%.