AI may surpass humans in most tasks by 2027: Anthropic CEO
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has predicted that artificial intelligence (AI) could surpass human capabilities “in almost everything” within the next two to three years.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Amodei told The Wall Street Journal that highly advanced AI models may soon outperform humans in nearly all economically valuable work.
“I don’t know exactly when it’ll come, I don’t know if it’ll be 2027. I think it’s plausible it could be longer than that. I don’t think it will be a whole bunch longer than that when AI systems are better than humans at almost everything,”
Amodei said during an interview at the Journal House in Davos. “Better than almost all humans at almost everything. And then eventually better than all humans at everything, even robotics.”
His comments align with recent statements from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, who defined Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) as the moment when AI surpasses human abilities in all economically valuable tasks. Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff has similarly suggested that AI will create a “limitless digital workforce.”
Economic and social impact
Amodei acknowledged the profound economic and societal implications of advanced AI. He suggested that AI-driven automation may force a fundamental reevaluation of human labor and economic structures.
“If we make good enough AI systems, they’ll enable us to make better robots. And so when that happens, we will need to have a conversation… at places like this event, about how do we organize our economy, right? How do humans find meaning?” Amodei said.
He cautioned that human-level AI and robotics capable of replacing all human labor would challenge traditional notions of self-worth and productivity.
“We’ve recognized that we’ve reached the point as a technological civilization where there’s huge abundance and huge economic value,” he added. “But the idea that the way to distribute that value is for humans to produce economic labor, and this is where they feel their sense of self-worth—once that idea gets invalidated, we’re all going to have to sit down and figure it out.”
Anthropic’s market position and funding surge
Founded in 2021 by Amodei, his sister Daniela Amodei, and five former OpenAI employees, Anthropic has quickly positioned itself as a leading AI research company. Its Claude 3.5 Sonnet model remains highly ranked in AI and AGI benchmarks, competing directly with OpenAI’s GPT-4 and ChatGPT.
Anthropic is currently in negotiations for a $2 billion funding round, which would value the company at $60 billion. Amodei revealed that the company’s revenue grew tenfold in 2024. Tech giants have taken notice, with Google announcing an additional $1 billion investment in Anthropic on Monday, bringing its total commitment to $3 billion.
Amazon has invested $8 billion over the past 18 months and plans to integrate Anthropic’s Claude models into future versions of its Alexa smart speaker.
Defining future AI systems
Despite his predictions, Amodei distanced himself from the term AGI, which Altman has favored. In a separate CNBC interview at Davos, he described AGI as a “marketing term” and instead likened future AI systems to a “country of geniuses in a data center.”
In an October 2024 essay, Amodei wrote that these AI systems must be “smarter than a Nobel Prize winner across most relevant fields.”
As AI development accelerates, his predictions underscore the urgent need for global discussions on regulation, economic restructuring, and the societal role of AI-driven automation.