• Reid Hoffman said AI will transform jobs, but he doesn't think it will cause a 'bloodbath.'
• The LinkedIn cofounder was referring to comments made by Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei last month.
• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has also disagreed with Anthropic's AI job loss predictions.

Reid Hoffman, the venture capitalist who cofounded LinkedIn, said AI will transform jobs, but he rejected the idea that it will result in a "bloodbath" for job seekers.

"Yes, I think people are underestimating AI's impact on jobs," Hoffman said on an episode of the Rapid Response podcast, released Tuesday.

"But I think inducing panic as a response is serving media announcement purposes," he said, "and not actually, in fact, intelligent industry and economic and career path planning."

The podcast's host, Bob Safian, asked Hoffman about comments made by Dario Amodei, CEO of AI firm Anthropic, in May.

In an interview with Axios, Amodei warned that AI companies and governments needed to stop "sugarcoating" the potential for mass job losses in white-collar industries like finance, law, and consulting.

"We, as the producers of this technology, have a duty and an obligation to be honest about what is coming," Amodei said.

He estimated that AI could spike unemployment by up to 20% in the next five years, and may eliminate half of entry-level white-collar jobs within that same period.

Hoffman said he had called the Anthropic CEO to discuss it.

"'Bloodbath' is a very good way to grab internet headlines, media headlines," Hoffman said. (Axios, not Amodei, used the phrase "white-collar bloodbath.")

But, Hoffman added, "bloodbath just implies everything going away."

He said he disagreed with this assessment, believing that transformation, not mass elimination, of jobs is a more likely outcome.

"Dario is right that over a decade or three, there will be a massive set of job transformation," Hoffman said.

But he compared it to the introduction of tools like Microsoft Excel, which were believed by some at the time to mark the end of accountancy roles.

"In fact, the accountant job got broader, richer," Hoffman said.

He added: "Just because a function's coming that has a replacement area on a certain set of tasks doesn't mean all of this job's going to get replaced."

Instead of AI eliminating roles, Hoffman predicted: "We at least have many years, if not a long time, of person-plus-AI doing things."

Hoffman isn't the only business leader to question Amodei's AI doomsday prophecy.

Speaking at VivaTech in Paris earlier this month, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said he and Amodei "pretty much disagree with almost everything" on AI.

"One, he believes that AI is so scary that only they should do it," Huang said. "Two, that AI is so expensive, nobody else should do it."

Huang added, "And three, AI is so incredibly powerful that everyone will lose their jobs, which explains why they should be the only company building it."

Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Russia's economy is on the brink of recession, the country's economy minister said.
• Maxim Reshetnikov said at an economic forum that data shows its economy is cooling.
• Russia is facing stubborn inflation, labor shortages, and the impact of Western sanctions.

The Russian economy is "on the brink" of entering a recession, the country's economy minister warned on Thursday.

Speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, a major annual business event in Russia, Maxim Reshetnikov said data showed the economy "cooling."

When a moderator asked him to describe the state of the economy, he said it seemed that the country was "on the verge of going into recession," according to Russian news agency Interfax.

He later clarified that he wasn't making an outright prediction. "I said that we were on the brink," Reshetnikov said. "From here on out, everything will depend on our decisions."

Reshetnikov has already raised concerns about the direction of the Russian economy. In May, while addressing the State Duma, he said that the economy was cooling so sharply it risked entering a state of economic "hypothermia."

In that address, Reshetnikov urged Russia's central bank to take into account easing inflation when setting interest rates. On June 6, the bank did just that, cutting its key interest rate from 21% to 20%, citing signs of declining inflation.

While inflation is easing slightly, it has remained stubbornly high — now hovering around 10% — since spiking in the wake of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

Hard or soft landing?

The central bank's moves to dampen inflation meant a sharp economic slowdown was inevitable and even intentional, said Brigitte Granville, professor of international economics and economic policy at Queen Mary, University of London.

"The key question has always been whether the Russian economy would undergo a 'hard landing' — meaning inflation would be brought under control at the cost of tipping the economy into recession — or a 'soft landing,' where inflation moderates without triggering a recession," she told BI in an email.

Even if a technical recession did occur, Granville said Russia's labour market remained extremely tight, supporting wage growth. "Even a hard landing would not have serious consequences for the sustainability of Russia's war effort."

All in on defense

Since the start of the war, Russia has gone all in on defense spending.

It's on track to spend about $130 billion on defense, roughly a third of its federal budget, up from 28.3% in 2024.

It's also potentially running low on cash, with one Swedish economist predicting that Russia could run out of liquid reserves as soon as this fall.

The country is still grappling with the effects of Western sanctions, which have targeted its oil and gas exports and largely cut financial institutions off from the international financial communication system SWIFT.

Russia's economy is also suffering from a severe labor shortage, driven in part by the military mobilization, as well as a brain drain of young professionals leaving the country.

According to state media, Russia had a shortfall of some 2.6 million workers at the end of 2024, with shortages hitting the manufacturing, trade, and transportation sectors especially hard.