Artificial intelligence could soon trigger an unemployment crisis unlike anything in history, according to Roman Yampolskiy, one of the first academics to warn about AI's risks.
Yampolskiy, a University of Louisville computer science professor who coined the term "AI safety," said artificial general intelligence — systems as capable as humans across domains — is likely to arrive by 2027.
Just three years later, he predicts, the labor market could collapse.
"In five years, we're looking at levels of unemployment we've never seen before," Yampolskiy said in a Thursday episode of the "Diary of a CEO" podcast. "Not talking about 10%, which is scary, but 99%."
He argued that AI tools and humanoid robots could make hiring humans uneconomical in nearly every sector.
"If I can just get, you know, a $20 subscription or a free model to do what an employee does. First, anything on a computer will be automated. And next, I think humanoid robots are maybe 5 years behind. So in five years, all the physical labor can also be automated."
If Yampolskiy's predictions were to come true, analysts, accountants, teachers, and even podcasters could be replaced by software, while plumbers and drivers could be overtaken by machines in the 2030s.
He even cited jobs like coding and "prompt engineering," once touted as future-proof, that he believes won't be spared. "AI is way better at designing prompts for other AIs than any human," he said. "So that's gone."
He also argued that retraining is obsolete. "All jobs will be automated, then there is no plan B. You cannot retrain," he said.
Yampolskiy told Business Insider that the real challenge goes beyond paychecks.
He said employment today provides income, structure, status, and community. If jobs vanish, societies will need to manufacture all four at scale.
That could mean income delivered through universal dividends, daily structure provided by civic or service corps, status earned through recognized contribution systems rather than pure entertainment metrics, and community sustained by local institutions or carefully designed virtual worlds.
"Today's societies are unprepared; absent deliberate meaning-infrastructure, abundance will degrade into addictive idleness," Yampolskiy said.
Other experts see a slower, less catastrophic path
Yampolskiy's prediction goes far beyond what most tech leaders and AI researchers have forecast.
Adam Dorr of the think tank RethinkX has warned of mass job loss by 2045, sparing only niches like sex work and politics.
Geoffrey Hinton, often called the "Godfather of AI," believes "mundane intellectual labor" such as call-center work and paralegal tasks will be replaced, but sees manual roles like plumbing as relatively safe.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has said half of all entry-level office jobs could vanish within five years, while OpenAI's Sam Altman has argued society will adapt and create new roles, even if they look "sillier and sillier."
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang and Meta's Yann LeCun have taken an even more optimistic stance, saying AI will transform jobs rather than eliminate them outright.
