What nobody talks about

In September, the parliamentary election in Norway takes place, and it's a dead heat between the blocs. That means we're entering a time where campaign promises flourish: cheaper kindergarten, lower taxes, increased defence budget, a stronger economy for farmers. On the other side of the Atlantic, however, amid protests, anger, and unrest, jobs are disappearing right in front of young workers' noses.

There's no reason to believe the Norwegian workforce will be spared.

AI-leaders issue warnings

The fact that OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei predict many will lose their jobs due to artificial intelligence isn't new, and I've written about it in Kludder before. So far, there's been considerable focus on programmers being replaced by AI. But ordinary workers will also feel this impact. At the end of May, Amodei estimated that 10-20 percent of the workforce could be replaced by AI within one to five years.

It appears that positions in tech, law, finance, and consulting will be particularly affected. The news site Axios has published an interview with Amodei, where he goes further in discussing the responsibility companies behind various language models have. In the interview, Amodei claims workers aren't aware of what awaits them:

"Cancer is cured, the economy grows by ten percent annually, the budget is balanced - and 20% of people are unemployed" - Dario Amodei to Axios.

He believes companies need to stop downplaying AI's effects to their employees and instead prepare and warn staff about the major changes coming. Today, generative AI is used to improve and streamline work tasks, particularly among those with higher education. Anthropic calls this augmentation. The next step is automation - when AI no longer helps an employee with their tasks but takes over the work completely.

The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 indicates that 41% of companies plan to lay off employees whose jobs are no longer relevant or where the need for human labor disappears. Jobs are disappearing, and we don't notice it happening, Amodei believes.

New graduates struggle

It's the highly educated knowledge workers who will feel the arrival of artificial intelligence most. In 2023, OpenAI studied how the job market would be affected by language models. They found that a plumber would be minimally affected, as their workday largely consists of physical labor.

A software developer, however, could experience tougher times. Language models perform well on work with clear success parameters. If the code works: mission accomplished. If there's more work to do, the AI handles it.

Pessimistic youth

In an op-ed for The New York Times, LinkedIn's Chief Economic Opportunity Officer, Aneesh Raman, writes about growing pessimism among American workers. The company produces The Workforce Confidence Index, which measures how optimistic 500,000 workers in the US are about career and job opportunities.

Generation Z - those in their twenties today - are most negative, and they may have good reasons:

In the same piece, Raman argues that it's the lowest rungs on the career ladder that "disappear first" when AI makes its entrance. The jobs new graduates take to learn working life before gradually gaining more responsibility and becoming leaders. The issue he raises is interesting: How will companies find tomorrow's leaders when there's no entry point for them?

This is something I hear everywhere. The tools have become so good that there's no longer a need for market and financial analysts or research assistants - Molly Kinder, Brookings Institute.

Senior positions safe

The American independent think tank Brookings has done a deep dive into which jobs might disappear, and once again junior positions are highlighted: A sales assistant has a much higher probability of being automated away (67%) versus a sales director (21%).

The same applies to graphics professionals, where graphic designers have twice the chance of disappearing compared to art directors. And the same goes for positions in the legal profession:

The past three years, unemployment among new graduates in the US has risen by 30 percent. Of course, concerns like trade wars and increasing tarriffs may also have an impact, but it's clear that AI also plays a role.

A threatened career ladder

As AI use and knowledge increases in Norway, it's not far-fetched that we'll see similar developments here. We could face a situation where the first rungs of the career ladder are destroyed, companies stop hiring new graduates, and it becomes even harder for students to find jobs.

Becoming a campaign issue

Steve Bannon, best known as Donald Trump's 2016 campaign strategist, MAGA ambassador, and eventually hardened Elon Musk critic, tells Axios that unemployment created by AI will be the biggest campaign issue in the 2028 American presidential election.

I don't think anyone is taking into consideration how administrative, managerial and tech jobs for people under 30 — entry-level jobs that are so important in your 20s — are going to be eviscerated. - Steve Bannon to Axios.

The development is happening at breakneck speed, and soon a new batch of students will graduate. In Norwegian business life, all they talk about is artificial intelligence, and in this year's Arendalsuka, I currently find 125 events with "artificial intelligence" in the title. But the topic seems absent from political debate.

That worries me, so close to the parliamentary election. It's obvious that a shift is underway. As we elect a government, it will cost Norway dearly not to have paid attention.

Machine tax

Language models are becoming powerful coders, and instead of paying salaries to their employees, companies will increasingly pay for AI services, or "tokens" they can use to code new services. Dario Amodei has floated the idea of taxing companies based on how many tokens are used. He suggests the money should go toward retraining people who have lost their jobs and ensuring the inequality gap doesn't become too large:

Obviously that's not in my economic interest, but I think it would be a sensible solution to the problem. - Dario Amodei to Axios.

Should Amodei be right in his AI predictions, such a tax could amount to billions - if not trillions - of dollars globally.

It remains to be seen whether Norway's politicians will grasp this development before it's too late.

War hackers

Predatory Sparrow is a hacker group believed to have close ties to Israel. This article from Wired provides interesting insight into how hacker groups can knock out banks and destroy crypto exchanges and their crypto values.

Spy AI

Chinese intelligence is investing heavily in AI according to this report from Recorded Future Insight. The New York Times has written an article that also provides some examples of how the CIA uses AI for espionage.

The GPT journalist

Last week I wrote about online newspapers struggling with search traffic from Google. In The Atlantic, you can read about the Italian newspaper Il Foglio, which has chosen to actively use ChatGPT to write stories. Each week they plan to publish an edition entirely written by AI.

To infinity.

If there won't be jobs to find on Earth, we fortunately have several planets to choose from.

The European Space Agency has described its dream scenario for 2040 in The Times. There, we humans live in orbit around Earth and on the surfaces of the Moon and Mars.

Expanding into space is not a luxury, but a necessity. Space is no longer just a frontier - it's territory. It provides access to unknown resources that open new markets and make scientific breakthroughs possible.

We're heading into exciting times. But one thing is certain: If we really are expanding into outer space, I'll bet a Norwegian cabin developer will try to build a gondola lift there as well.