Anthropic Engineer Predicts Massive Job Losses as AI Takes Over Digital Work

According to a prominent Anthropic engineer, the United States is on the cusp of an AI revolution. He noted that the next generation of AI agents will soon be able to do almost any job that requires internet access. In a recent podcast, Boris Cherny, who developed Claude Code at Anthropic, predicted that chatbots of the future will be able to control computers.

The situation of employment in the United States will be altered by this groundbreaking innovation. Most recently, Cherny made these remarks when appearing on "Lenny's Podcast," which is hosted by Lenny Rachitsky. Anthropic engineer pointed out that Anthropic-sold AI systems can act across all of a company's computing tools. Software developers, product managers, designers, and other knowledge workers may soon see their careers reshaped by their ability to take on many responsibilities.

What is Anthropic’s Claude Code?

The construction of Claude Code is attributed to Boris Cherny. The Claude Opus 4.6 model was unveiled in February by the San Francisco-based lab that has backing from Amazon.com and Alphabet's Google. The tech stock market took a nosedive after an artificial intelligence coding agent sparked market anxiety. The new AI has shown improvements in coding and finance, and it can work on tasks for longer and more reliably, according to Anthropic.

Agents like the one Anthropic unveiled can do more than just make words and graphics; they can also analyse papers, communicate with coworkers, finish tasks across apps, and construct websites. Claude Code can now do more and more computational tasks at the level of a person. Still, the business recently stated that it still has some way to go before it can compete with humans in terms of talent. According to Cherny, it's the feature that makes agentic AI accessible to those who have never used it before, allowing them to acquire a feel for it for the first time.

Title Of Software Engineer to Vanish Soon: Cherny

Cherny recently stated in an interview with the "Lightcone" podcast from Y Combinator that software engineers will begin to "go away" by the year 2026. He cautioned that the wider consequences of this are still up in the air. He told Rachitsky that society as a whole needed to have this talk and figure it out. "Anyone can just build software anytime," the Anthropic engineer chimed in.

Additionally, he offered some guidance to employees dealing with the change in their job duties: try out different AI tools and get a feel for how they perform. "Don't be afraid of them", he reassured. Cherny's remarks are made in the midst of a global wave of layoffs affecting various tech professions and firms. The creator of Claude Code claimed that his own team is now using AI to work faster and that since the new AI tool was launched, productivity per engineer has been rising. Additionally, he expressed his belief that the models will continue to improve.