Tesla’s former AI director Andrej Karpathy has just made a prediction that Artificial intelligence could affect several high-paying professions as automation speeds up. Karpathy shared a chart on the social media platform ‘X’ (formerly Twitter), in which he estimated the extent to which different jobs across the US will be affected by AI-enforced automation.
In a post shared on ‘X’, Andrej Karpathy wrote, “This was a Saturday morning hour vibe coded project inspired by a book I’m reading. I thought the code/data might be helpful to others to explore the BLS dataset visually, or colour it in different ways or with different prompts or add their own visualisations. It’s been wildly misinterpreted (which I should have anticipated, even despite the readme docs), so I took it down.”
How Andrej created the chart
The ex-Tesla AI head created this chart using data from the US Bureau of Labour Statistics, according to a Fortune report. He assigned exposure scores to various jobs on a scale from 0 to 10, with 10 indicating greater automation vulnerability. The analysis suggested that roles with salaries above $100,000 had an average exposure score of 6.7, while roles earning less than $35,000 had an average exposure score of 3.4.
The chart drew attention online and prompted discussions about the potential impact of AI on white-collar employment. Andrej Karpathy later removed the data after it circulated widely on social media.
Not all jobs under threat
Despite these warnings, Andrej Karpathy’s chart does not see AI as a universal replacement for human workers. Jobs that require creativity, emotional intelligence, and human interaction are expected to remain relatively safe in the near future.
Roles in areas like design, leadership, caregiving, and the arts depend on uniquely human qualities that AI still struggles to replicate. This suggests that while AI may automate tasks, it may also shift human focus toward more creative and interpersonal work.
Which jobs are more prone to automation?
According to Andrej Karpathy’s chart, roles that rely heavily on structured thinking and repetitive cognitive tasks are particularly vulnerable. These include professions such as software engineering, legal analysis, and financial services—jobs that traditionally require years of education and offer high salaries.
The reasoning is simple that while these roles demand expertise, much of the work follows predictable patterns. AI systems, especially advanced language and reasoning models, are increasingly capable of handling such structured problem-solving tasks with speed and efficiency.