Anthropic has launched a new program that will track the impact of artificial intelligence on the economy. According to the firm, the new initiative, the Economic Futures Program, will support research on the impact of AI on the labor market and the global economy. Silicon Valley has shared opinions on the promise of generative AI to forge new career paths and economic opportunities, with banks and analysts also talking about the potential of AI to boost GDP. However, those gains are unlikely to be distributed equally in the face of what many expect to be the widespread job losses due to artificial intelligence. Anthropic claims that it plans to develop policy proposals to prepare for the shift with its new initiative. Anthropic launches initiative to track AI impact Speaking about the new initiative , the head of policy programs and partnerships at Anthropic, Sarah Heck, said the company came up with the initiative because people were asking questions about the positive and negative economic impacts of artificial intelligence. “It’s really important to root these conversations in evidence and not have predetermined outcomes or views on what’s going to [happen],” she added. Over the last few months, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has been one of the vocal voices discussing the impact of AI on the economy. In May, he predicted that AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and increase unemployment to as high as 20% in the next five years. When asked if one of the goals of the Economic Futures Program was to reduce job losses related to AI, Heck was cautious, noting that the AI shift could be both bad and good. “I think the key goal is to figure out what is actually happening,” she said. “If there is job loss, then we should convene a collective group of thinkers to talk about mitigation. If there will be a huge GDP expansion, great. We should also convene policymakers to figure out what to do with that. I don’t think any of this will be a monolith,” she said. The program looks to build on Anthropic’s Economic Index initiative that was launched in February, with open-source aggregated data to analyze the effects of AI on the economy over time, some of the data its competitors do not reveal. The program will focus on three main areas According to Anthropic, the program is expected to focus on three main areas, which will include providing grants to researchers investigating AI’s effect on labor, productivity, and value creation. Other aspects include the creation of forums to develop and evaluate policy proposals to prepare for AI’s economic impacts and build datasets to track AI’s economic impacts and usage. The company will kickstart the program with some action items. The firm has also opened applications for its rapid grants of up to $50,000 for research on AI’s economic impacts, as well as evidence-based policy proposals for symposia events hosted by Anthropic in Washington D.C. and Europe in the fall. Anthropic said it is open to partnering with independent research institutions and will provide partners with Claude API credits and other resources to support research. Heck mentioned that Anthropic is looking for individuals, academics, or teams that can come up with quality data in a short period. These teams will be the major beneficiaries of the grants. “We want to be able to complete it within six months,” she said. “It doesn’t necessarily have to be peer-reviewed.” For the symposia, the firm wants policy ideas from different backgrounds and perspectives, with Heck noting that the policy proposals are expected to go beyond labor. “We want to understand more about the transitions,” she said. “How do workflows happen in new ways? How are new jobs being created that nobody ever contemplated before?… How are certain skills remaining valuable while others are not?” She also added that Anthropic hopes to study the effects of AI on fiscal policy. For example, what happens if there is a shift in the way that enterprises see value creation? “We really want to open the aperture here on things that can be studied,” Heck said. “Labor is certainly one of them, but it’s a much broader swath.” Cryptopolitan Academy: Tired of market swings? Learn how DeFi can help you build steady passive income. Register Now
