Barack Obama Warns AI Revolution Is 'Not Hype,' Says 'You're Going To Start Seeing Shifts...'

Former President Barack Obama warned that artificial intelligence is "coming to your neighborhood faster than you think," saying the technology is already reshaping white-collar work and could accelerate economic disruption.

What Happened: Speaking with historian Heather Cox Richardson at The Connecticut Forum, Obama said the AI boom "is not made up. It's not over-hyped. You are already there, probably." after meeting backstage with Hartford business owners.

“I guarantee you you're going to start seeing shifts in white-collar work as a consequence of what these new AI models can do,” he added, predicting the trend will “speed up.”

His comments came as venture and corporate leaders debate forecasts that AI could wipe out up to half of entry-level office jobs within five years. Obama has shared a similar warning on social media, urging public discussions on the technology for its "accelerating impact” on jobs.

Obama pushed back on skepticism that AI mirrors past tech cycles. "Most of the problems we face are not simply technical," he said, but the pace of change means policies must anticipate displacement earlier than in previous industrial shifts.

Why It Matters: The former President’s comment arrived weeks after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei‘s warning that people should be "worried" about the AI age. In contrast, that take has since seen some pushback from the likes of Nvidia NVDA CEO Jensen Huang and billionaire Mark Cuban, who’s certain that AI will create more jobs.

Demis Hassabis, CEO of Alphabet Inc. GOOGL GOOG subsidiary Google's DeepMind, is also of the opinion that while AI is displacing certain jobs, it will also create new ones. Meta Platforms META CEO Mark Zuckerberg envisions AI evolving into a "midlevel engineer" capable of writing code, enabling small, talent-dense teams to develop high-quality products.