AI, the Economy, and You: A People

Artificial Intelligence Will Shape All Americans’ Lives, Let’s Turn Change into Progress for Everyone

DARIO AMODEI | ANTHROPIC CEO | JANUARY 2026

Put differently, as we say at Better Markets: change is certain, progress is not. The key is to encourage and support change while harnessing and channeling it so that change becomes progress that is real, broadly shared, and beneficial for the maximum number of people. That’s why, as Mr. Amodei’s observation rightly suggests, artificial intelligence is not primarily a technology story. It is fundamentally about the understanding of AI’s impact on the lives of everyday Americans—from those working on shop floors and retail counters to those working desk jobs and corner offices—and whether those lives will get better or worse. It is about how AI will reshape the economic and financial (and democratic) systems that are already too often rigged against Main Street workers, families, and communities who have been working harder and harder over decades for less and less. And it is about whether those making the decisions that determine those outcomes are truly collaborative and inclusive.

Change is happening fast and speeding up. OpenAI’s chatbot, ChatGPT, reached 100 million users just two months after launch and claimed over 900 million total weekly active users three years later. Nearly every major employer, including every large financial institution, in America is racing to implement some form of AI. The technology is being incorporated into ever-increasing parts of daily life, often without much testing or even awareness by the users.

Right now, private corporations racing to be first and chasing short-term profits are driving AI’s development even when they admit that society’s structures simply cannot keep up and, even when they try, cannot match the speed, scope, and scale of these extremely complex changes. The public interest is too often an afterthought or viewed as an impediment to innovation without much consideration for what that innovation really means for most Americans. Or worse: the self-interested actors—ostensibly unaware of the conflicts of interest in their claims—are insisting that everything they do is in the public interest, which just happens to correspond with maximizing their own private interests. Under such circumstances, the likelihood of change becoming progress is not high. That’s why we need a people-centered AI mindset, framework, and agenda.

To be clear, many in the AI industry share these goals, including responsible developers, researchers, and companies that want AI to be built and deployed in ways that serve people and society. There are also responsible leaders throughout industry and Corporate America who are also concerned about the technology’s impact on their workforce, their families, and communities. They are welcome and necessary allies for a people-centered AI agenda.

Given the pace, scale, and scope of AI-driven changes, at the micro level AI-based systems will soon decide: