Tech titans and stock market investors are increasingly unified in their forecast that artificial intelligence will permanently eliminate millions of white-collar jobs and render traditional employment obsolete.
Software and services stocks have taken a beating, with software multiples pulling back by roughly 33% since late 2025 as investors fret over AI’s potential to automate vast swaths of knowledge work. Earlier this year, Elon Musk predicted that AI and humanoid robots will make work completely “optional” within the next 10 to 20 years, ushering in a post-scarcity economy where money itself becomes irrelevant. He joins a growing chorus of tech executives issuing stark warnings about human obsolescence; OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently cautioned that superintelligence could soon outperform even top corporate executives, while Microsoft AI chief Mustafa Suleyman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei have projected that sweeping white-collar automation could arrive in one to five years. Economists remain skeptical of the timeline, noting that the apocalyptic narrative may be as much a tool to justify astronomical tech valuations as it is an impending economic reality.
