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Fear Of AGI Is Driving Harvard And MIT Students To Drop Outwww.forbes.com/sites/victoriafeng/2025/08/06/fear-of-super-intelligent-ai-is-driving-harvard-and-mit-students-to-drop-out
218 sats \ 1 comment \ @Coinsreporter 21h AI
Already, some companies are hiring fewer interns and recent graduates because AI is capable of doing their tasks. Others are conducting mass layoffs. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned that AI could eliminate half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and cause unemployment to rise to 20% in the next few years.
Students are terrified that this shift will dramatically accelerate when true AGI arrives, though when that might happen is up for debate. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman thinks AGI will be developed before 2029, while Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis predicts that it’ll come in the next five to 10 years. Jurković believes it might arrive even sooner: He co-authored a timeline forecast for the AI Futures Project, which aligns with the prediction that most white-collar jobs could be automated by 2030.
If the students are leaving these prestigious names midway, I assume there's much more dropping out going on in the general universities. There must be some research/survey on it lest it should become a big problem.
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179 sats \ 0 replies \ @optimism 20h
She’s lined up a contract gig as a technical writer at the Center for AI Safety, a nonprofit focused on AI safety research, where she helps with newsletters and research papers.
His brother, roommate and girlfriend have also taken leave from Harvard for similar reasons. The three of them currently work for OpenAI.
Jared Mantell, who was studying economics and computer science at Washington University in St. Louis before dropping out to focus full-time on his startup dashCrystal, which aims to automate design of electronics.
Is it really "Fear of AGI" making such a change? As a dropout myself (twice, oof) these sound like the usual where you undervalue the degree in favor of action.
I'd agree with Graham though that in the face of AGI, your degree is worth more, not less? It all sounds a bit irrational to me.
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