Anthropic made the following predictions for several economic scenarios: In a moderate scenario, GDP in 2030 would be only 1.6% higher than the baseline without AI; in a significant scenario, it would be 8.3% higher, with knowledge worker wages essentially stagnating; the extreme scenario assumes that AI rapidly improves itself, almost autonomously completing knowledge work without creating new tasks, in which case GDP would be 32.4% higher than the baseline, with an annual growth rate reaching 15%, an unemployment rate approaching 12%, knowledge worker wages falling by more than 10%, and the share of labor income dropping from approximately 60% to 45.2%.
However, Axios points out that this model does not incorporate the impact of unemployment shocks on consumption and corporate layoffs, nor does it consider economic recessions, financial turmoil, data center congestion, and robots replacing manual labor. Therefore, the extreme scenario is closer to a stress test. The core contradiction brought about by AI may not be "whether it can create growth," but rather who owns the models and computing power, and who can share in the growth.
