A Chat With Claude

Welcome to This Week’s Leyendecker View

Being honest is always interesting.
– Charlie Mackesy of The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse

FAVORITE READ OF THE WEEK

The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse
The animated version won an Academy Award

THINKING OUT LOUD

A Chat With Claude

A good friend and I were discussing AI’s potential to disrupt the job market. After some broad based, not really informed perspectives, I got the idea…Why not just ask AI what might happen to the job market? It is artificial intelligence, right?

A good friend uses Claude, the LLM from Anthropic (valued at $60B), and likes it. So I signed up and asked Claude:

“What legacy jobs will AI replace, and what new jobs is AI going to create?”

I also asked it for current numbers of legacy jobs at risk, which Claude sourced from the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Here’s Claude’s answer to the jobs most vulnerable to automation:

“Data entry and processing roles (1.7MM), basic customer service positions (3MM), simple accounting and bookkeeping tasks (1.6MM), basic content writing and translation work (125K), routine legal document review (350K), entry-level medical image analysis (52K), basic software testing (175K).”

These all seem to be low-skilled service jobs. Adding them up comes to about 7 million jobs at risk.

As for what Claude said about the jobs AI will create:

“AI Trainers and Data Quality Specialists (150K – 200K), AI Ethics Officers (50K – 75K), AI-Human Interaction Designers (40K-60K), Machine Learning Operations Engineers (100K – 150K), AI Prompt Engineers (25K-50K), AI Safety Researchers (15K-25K), AI Auditors [Claude did not project a number for this job category], Domain Experts (300K-400K).”

These all seem to be high-skilled jobs. Adding them up comes to almost 1MM new jobs AI will create.

But surely the AI gold rush will create other new jobs. Someone has to build out the AI support infrastructure. The most obvious need is for way more data centers and the energy to power them. So I went back and asked Claude about these jobs.

According to Claude, “it will take between 400,000 and 500,000 workers to construct all the necessary data centers by 2030. Between 200,000 and 250,000 workers will be needed to operate and maintain all of these data centers. Then about 275,000 workers will be needed in support industries like hardware manufacturing, supply chain, environmental oversight and cyber security.”

That’s about 1MM new jobs to construct, operate and maintain all these data centers.

Claude also projects that as many “as 600,000 new jobs will be needed in the renewable energy sector, with solar installation and maintenance accounting for about half of these jobs. Traditional power generation is expected to need about 150,000 new jobs. And then emerging energy technologies could create up to 90,000 new jobs.”

So let’s do the math. AI puts about 7MM jobs at risk. Newly-created AI jobs will be about 1MM. It will take about 1MM workers to construct all the new data centers. And we will need about 850,000 new jobs in the energy sector. Add the new job sectors together and we get 2.8MM potential new AI-created jobs.

Can 2.8MM new AI-created jobs waterfall down to replace those 7MM job losses? The answer is, maybe so.

Historically, goods producing jobs lead to the creation of service providing jobs. So I asked Claude about the ratio of goods producing jobs to service providing jobs in the US, which is apparently “1 goods producing job to 6.3 service providing jobs.”

If we consider AI-created jobs to be “goods producing” (and many of them—construction, energy, manufacturing—are), and if we assume that 1 goods producing AI job will create 6.3 consequent service providing jobs, then AI could theoretically create an additional 17.4MM new service providing jobs. Add in the initial 2.8MM AI-created jobs, and we are close to 20MM potential new jobs replacing the 7MM potential AI job losses.

Of course there’s a lot of speculation in this analysis. But at the end of the day, as all new technologies have done in the past, the odds seem good that AI may create way more jobs than it destroys.

Thanks for all the research help, Claude!

THE RANDOMS

It was a big surprise to read last week that Chevron is going to cut 15% to 20% of its workers. That seems a bit excessive. But then I thought… OH! The Trump administration must have told Chevron they have to give up their cash cow, Venezuela operations, in order to bring down Maduro’s dictatorship. Maybe Trump gave Chevron a heads-up. 

A Social Security worker helped DOGE, so he got fired. Then he became the boss.

We should realize that most of the “news” reporting on the US-Russia-Ukraine-Europe war negotiations will be nothing but clickbait. It’s a negotiation process, which means all sides are going to start with something that’s not doable, but this eventually leads to compromise. As a divorce lawyer once told me, “You know it’s a good deal when both sides think they got screwed.”

Just for “fun,” ask your search engine how many federal government health agencies there are.

The whole Gulf of America thing probably sounds crazy to a number of people, but the reason behind it seems pretty logical. Will more of Trump’s crazy ideas prove the same?

Goldman Sachs suggests AI could increase our productivity by 15% over the next ten years. For some reason, that doesn’t sound extraordinary.

In 2024, Japanese banks finally began making the big bucks again. Let’s see, the Japanese banking system hit bottom in 1992. So it “only” took 32 years for Japan’s banks to return to worthwhile growth. China and Western banks should take note.

Have we reached peak tech? Has tech reached a point of diminishing returns? Does the average person understand how it all works?

Have we reached peak news, peak media? Maybe we’ve reached peak mainstream news.

ECONOMIC NEWS

Economy
Is a slowdown coming?

Leading economic indicators send bad signal
Walmart sees a consumer slowdown
Retail sales plunge in January
Consumers relying on more and more debt
And struggle to keep up with payments

Labor
Most remote work programs are over.

US jobless claims tick up
Jamie Dimon says “empathetic leadership” is over
Construction industry has big labor shortage
The health care jobs boom

Inflation
The Fed is afraid of tariffs’ influence.

No relief ahead on used car prices
Cocoa stockpiles at record low
The tequila boom created a price war
The wine boom is over, too

BUSINESS

Finance
Will higher interest rates bite companies?

US companies’ growing debt problems
JPM snubs regulators on PE exposure
The new survival guide for private equity
Robinhood heads to the big leagues

Real Estate
Housing is not an economic stimulus today.

Housing market not in great shape
JPM doesn’t expect much lower mortgage rates
Bitter cold bites housing starts
Cities are turning hospitals into apartments

Tech
Every week, something new and interesting.

Microsoft claims quantum breakthrough
But it might be overstated
Meta to build longest undersea cable
Tech IPO market remains disappointing
Is Intel about to be split up?

AI
When will AI replace search engines?

How WSJ readers use AI at work
The world is deleting DeepSeek
AI agents not ready for prime time
AI agents will soon get better

Energy Transition
Climate change policies are in retreat.

Greta Thunberg’s lawsuit gets tossed
Trump seeks O&G industry tax cuts
Big tech pours $1.5B into mini nuclear reactors
Electricity demand surges globally
It’s not just AI and data centers
Germany scales back climate ambitions

THE NATION

The Washing-Tone
Change can be hard to swallow.

Trump echoes US Founders’ intent
Trump wants power over independent agencies
He wants to take over the Postal Service
Latin American cartels labeled as terrorists
National Science Foundation cuts staff
Trump asks for SCOTUS help
Are federal judges overstepping their roles?

DOGE
What will DOGE accomplish in a year?

Wasteful spending is not hard to find
DOGE savings tracker
What to do with the DOGE savings
Judge lets DOGE access federal agencies

The Tariff War
Trump loves using tariffs for negotiation.

Trump floats 25% tariffs
Taiwan could invest billions in Texas
Japan wants a tariff exemption

Social Trends
Can we keep up with so much change?

People are logging off
Weight loss drugs are a game changer
Teen drug and alcohol use at new low

GEOPOLITICS

Global
The geopolitical world is upside down.

Trump demands new world order
Brazil joins OPEC+ group
US to sell India lots of natural gas
Americans think foreign aid is wasted

Europe
Trump, a wake-up call for Europe.

Germany is a complete cluster
Europe must unite or die
Europe is sabotaging its own economy
Europe’s farmers are fed up

Ukraine
Beware the clickbait, focus on substance.

Trump demands Ukraine deal
While EU considers big Ukraine arms deal
US government controls Ukraine’s media
Trump wants Ukraine elections
A guide to US-Russian talks

Middle East
How long before this cease-fire ends?

Bombs explode empty buses in Israel
Hamas to release more hostages
Hamas says it will cede power
Israel not ready to withdraw from Lebanon
Netanyahu praises Trump’s bold vision

China
Xi needs a vibrant economy.

Oil imports from Iran jump
Xi back to supporting private sector
The “Anything But China” movement
China tightens grip on foreign companies

War Creep
Spend smarter, not more.

Defense Secretary wants spending cuts
Drone boat company raises $600MM
Taiwan considers multi-billion US arms purchase
Russia has a new spy unit

MAKING A BETTER YOU

Mind
Get more quiet time.

Why everyone should believe in God
What new love does to the brain
Take more notice of the beauty around you

Body
Get more outside time.

Should dinner be the smallest meal of the day?
How to hit peak fitness
Booze or weed, what’s worse?

FUN STUFF

Let your hair down, baby! Even if you’re all alone.

The Extraordinary

These sourdough “canvases” are super fine
Could this asteroid destroy earth?
Its chances of doing so go up

Music That Found Us

Tallboys Band, “One Your Own”
Jon Batiste performing Beatles’ “Blackbird,” then “Für Elise”
Unbelievable 12-year-old piano prodigy

Worth a Watch

The top animated film ever, Ne Zha 2.
Visit Italy with La Dolce Villa.
The Gorge is hijinks fun.
Bridget Jones is back to tug at our hearts.

The Yum Yums

How to crack an egg
How to boil an egg
The best scrambled eggs
The best way to fry an egg
The best poached eggs
Classic quiche Lorraine
How to make frittata
Gimme some migas

PARTING THOUGHTS

“What’s the bravest thing you’ve ever said?” asked the boy.
“Help. Asking for help isn’t giving up, it’s refusing to give up,” said the horse.
– Charlie Mackesy in The Boy, the Mole, the Fox and the Horse

IN CASE YOU MISSED IT

Thoughts and Questions About AI
February 14, 2025

No Pain, No Gain
February 7, 2025