and some billionaire or top executive issues a grim warning about the future of artificial intelligence. It seems not a day goes by without another alarm bell ringing.

The latest harbinger of technological upheaval is Bridgewater Associates, one of the world’s largest hedge funds. According to Bridgewater CEO Nir Bar Dea, AI could displace nearly a fifth of the U.S. workforce unless society prepares and regulators step in.

"While we are extremely optimistic about the positive impacts of AI, we also recognize that anything capable of transforming the world for the better to such an extent can also have extremely negative consequences," Bar Dea stated in a new episode of *The David Rubenstein Show: Peer-to-Peer Conversations*. "We estimate that AI could displace 18% of American workers. Just imagine the scale of the social upheaval that could follow."

Bar Dea is far from the only executive at the $100 billion firm sounding the alarm. Chief Investment Officer Greg Jensen—notably an early investor in OpenAI and Anthropic PBC—likened the current complacency regarding AI to the early days of the pandemic, when society at large failed to grasp the looming threat of COVID-19. Meanwhile, billionaire investor Paul Tudor Jones described the looming AI threat as akin to "waiting for a Category 6 hurricane."

However, the tone of these warnings is beginning to shift. The alarms keep sounding, but the conversation is becoming increasingly economic and less apocalyptic. Anthropic itself warned this week of potentially serious consequences associated with AI in its official documentation, highlighting risks linked to increasingly powerful systems. This warning comes amidst a rising tide of concern regarding the impact AI might have on jobs and the economy at large. We have moved beyond the panic-driven market fears sparked by Citrini Research’s in-depth analyses of an AI-induced structural collapse; recent discussions focus increasingly on whether AI will destroy jobs, rather than whether it is capable of destroying humanity.

Even the most vocal pessimists are revising their scenarios. Elon Musk—who famously warned that developing AI was akin to "summoning a demon"—displayed a markedly more optimistic attitude at the White House on Tuesday. When asked what people should do if AI eliminates "office jobs," Musk replied: "Jobs will change. They’ve always changed." He likened this shift to the disappearance of the "computer" profession—people whose job was to perform mathematical calculations—and expressed confidence that an "evolution of roles" would occur.

Musk stated that his "most likely scenario" is an "age of abundance," in which "we’ll have not just universal basic income, but universal high income." He noted that, thanks to robots and superintelligence, everyone would eventually be able to receive better medical care than anyone in the White House—"including me."

Bridgewater is also taking a strictly pragmatic approach to the predicted "social upheaval." Instead of fleeing a Category 6 hurricane, the firm—founded 51 years ago—is building windmills to harness its energy.

Technology plays a pivotal role in the fund’s global macroeconomic investments. "If you want to build models and understand how the world works, you need to combine human intelligence with technology," explained Bar Dea.

In 2024, Bridgewater raised nearly $2 billion for an AI-driven fund designed to let technology generate investment ideas while humans manage risk. The strategy is working: the AI-based fund consistently outperforms the market while generating ideas fundamentally different from those proposed by Bridgewater’s traditional human traders.

"It’s mind-boggling when you think about what the future holds," said Bar Dea. At the same time, he warned against harboring illusions: off-the-shelf technology solutions are no panacea. "You need unique data and unique model-training specialists" to truly maintain a competitive edge.