Roman Yampolskiy, a computer science professor has warned that people all over the world that Advanced AI will make 99 percent of people unemployed in the next five years. The professor said this at a podcast that by 2030, advanced enhanced capabilities of AI will pose a risk for humanity and job markets.
Professor not alone in warning of job losses!
The professor’s predictions match the forecasts made by other AI experts. Geoffrey Hinton, known as the “Godfather of AI” due to his pioneering work in the subject, stated in June that AI is going to “replace everybody” in white collar jobs. He challenged the idea that AI would create new jobs, pointing out that if AI automates tasks, there would be no jobs for people to do.
Meanwhile, in May, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei stated that AI would eliminate half of all entry-level, white-collar jobs within the next one to five years, causing unemployment to reach a high of 20%.
Who is the professor?
The professor behind this statement is University of Louisville Computer Science Professor Roman Yampolskiy. Professor Roman was at a podcast recently titled “The Diary of a CEO”, where he made these comments about the job losses in white collar jobs due to AI. During the episode, he explained the reason behind this statement.
Yampolskiy claims to have coined the term “AI safety” in a 2011 article and has since published more than 100 papers on AI’s dangers. He has written multiple books, including his 2025 book “Considerations on the AI Endgame: Ethics, Risks and Computational Frameworks.”
AGI’s more capable than humans!
Yampolskiy said that artificial general intelligence systems (AGI) that are as capable as humans would likely be developed by 2027, leading to a labor market collapse three years later. He predicted that AI would provide “trillions of dollars” of “free labor,” giving employers a better option for their employment needs.
“You have free labor, physical and cognitive, trillions of dollars of it,” Yampolskiy said. “It makes no sense to hire humans for most jobs if I can just get a $20 subscription or a free model to do what an employee does.”
Prompt Engineers beware!
In the podcast interview, Yampolskiy said that even coding and prompt engineering weren’t safe from automation. AI can design prompts for AI “way better” than any human, he stated. Retraining is also impossible in this new reality because AI will automate all jobs and “there is no plan B,” Yampolskiy said.
Moreover, he predicts that any job on a computer would immediately be automated once AGI arrives and that humanoid robots would take over physical labor jobs within the next five years, leading to unprecedented levels of unemployment.
Which jobs are safe?
The only jobs left will be those that humans prefer another human to do for them, Yampolskiy said. AI will “very quickly” gain the capacity to take over other human occupations, including teachers, analysts, and accountants, he predicted. “So we’re looking at a world where we have levels of unemployment we’ve never seen before,” Yampolskiy said on the podcast. “Not talking about 10% unemployment, which is scary, but 99%.”
