Tesla’s former AI director Andrej Karpathy, reportedly predicted that artificial intelligence (AI) could affect several high-paying professions as automation expands across the workplace. Over the weekend, the OpenAI co-founder shared a chart on the microblogging site X (formerly Twitter) estimating the extent to which different US occupations may be exposed to AI and automation. Karpathy created this chart using data from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, according to a Fortune report. Karpathy 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. Karpathy later removed the data after it circulated widely on social media.
What Karpathy said about the AI job displacement chart he created
In a post shared on X, Karpathy wrote: “This was a saturday morning 2 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 color it in different ways or with different prompts or add their own visualizations. It’s been wildly misinterpreted (which I should have anticipated even despite the readme docs) so I took it down.”In a statement to Fortune, Karpathy did not address whether different interpretations of his data could exist. From the archived data, it was clear that white-collar jobs, such as software development, data science, and financial analysis, have greater AI exposure, while jobs in construction, maintenance, and personal care have lower AI exposure.The above data relates to the larger discussion of the impact of AI on work. A recent report by Anthropic indicated that AI has the potential to perform real-world tasks in business, finance, and law.Some analysts dispute predictions of widespread job losses. Citadel Securities said job posting data indicate demand for software engineers has increased, while daily workplace use of generative AI remains stable and shows little evidence of immediate job displacement. The company also noted that expanding AI infrastructure is increasing demand for construction work and that rising computing costs could limit automation in some tasks.
