David Sacks: The Threat of AI to Jobs Is Overstated

David Sacks, head of the White House’s artificial intelligence and cryptocurrency division, dismissed growing concerns about mass job cuts due to AI. He stated that human oversight is still required to create real business value.

Why the AI job loss narrative is overhyped: AI models still need to be prompted and verified, often iteratively, to drive business value. As @balajis says, AI is middle-to-middle, not end-to-end. Humans do the stuff at the ends (supervision); AI does the stuff in the middle. https://t.co/fDVDUIbbmR

— David Sacks (@DavidSacks) August 3, 2025

“Why the discussions about layoffs due to artificial intelligence are exaggerated: AI models still need to be guided and verified, often repeatedly, to bring business benefits. AI is ‘middle-to-middle,’ not ‘end-to-end.’ Humans perform the tasks at the ends (control and supervision), while neural networks operate in the middle,” he wrote.

Sacks’s comments followed the publication of a Microsoft list of 40 positions that AI could replace. The authors noted that cognitive and creative work is at risk:

• professions involving writing, design, analysis, programming, multimedia production;
• particularly vulnerable are those where data input and processing are key.

Examples of professions likely to disappear or undergo significant transformation include:

• translators and linguists;
• proofreaders and editors;
• content marketers and copywriters;
• entry-level lawyers (e.g., contract drafting);
• graphic designers;
• basic-level programmers;
• assistants processing texts or reports;
• reporters, especially in short news.

Customer service specialists also rank high on the list.

Professions resilient to AI include:

• those requiring physical labor (builders, electricians, plumbers, etc.);
• those requiring emotional intelligence and human contact (nurses, educators, psychotherapists);
• those with unpredictable conditions (emergency services, on-site repairs).

Microsoft researchers analyzed 200,000 anonymous chats with Bing Copilot to study practical applications of artificial intelligence. It was found that AI is most often needed for information gathering, writing, consulting, and training.

Experts assessed how effectively AI performs specific tasks to calculate an “applicability index” for various professions.

Roles related to reporting and writing received high scores—ranging from 0.38 to 0.39. Meanwhile, market analysts and data specialists were at the lower end of the range with scores from 0.35 to 0.36.

Sacks shared his views in response to a publication by former Coinbase CTO Balaji Srinivasan, who questioned the dominant narratives that AI will replace humans at work.

“Modern artificial intelligence is not truly agentive, as it is not completely independent of humans. AI does not take your job—it enables any activity,” wrote Srinivasan.

He noted that AI does not take away human jobs but replaces previous artificial intelligence.

“Midjourney is used instead of Stable Diffusion, and GPT-4 instead of GPT-3. If your workflow already includes image generation, coding, and so on, you simply start using a newer model. Thus, AI displaces old AI, not humans,” Srinivasan emphasized.

Earlier, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella stated that 20-30% of the company’s code is written by artificial intelligence.

Back in July, the company’s Chief Commercial Officer Judson Althoff stated that AI saved it over $500 million last year. Meanwhile, the firm laid off 15,000 people.