Robots and AI Could Reach 80% of U.S. Work, but Rarely at Lower Cost, Anthropic Says

Robots and AI models together could take on about 80% of the work Americans do, according to Anthropic. But robots are cheaper than people for only 0.3% of tasks today.

The findings come from Anthropic's new robotics study, which Business Insider reported this week. The research extends the company's earlier work on how AI chatbots affect jobs.

AI models alone reach about half of all work, the study found. Adding robots pushes that figure to about 81%. The two technologies hit very different jobs. Robots reach physical, lower-paid roles that chatbots miss, the opposite of the usual AI pattern.

Transportation shows the gap most clearly. Fewer than 15% of transport tasks are exposed to AI models alone. With robots, that share jumps to about 90%. Nine of the ten most exposed jobs are vehicle drivers, led by taxi drivers.

Cost is the bigger barrier

Robots can technically handle about 74% of physical tasks, the study says. Most of those, however, only work in tightly controlled settings such as assembly lines.

Cost is the larger obstacle. About 300,000 U.S. workers hold jobs where robots are already cheaper, mostly packers and packagers. If robot prices fell 20%, that number would rise to about 2.8 million workers. At past rates of decline, reaching 10% of tasks would take about 40 years.

What about hands-on jobs?

Business Insider's Alistair Barr questioned what the shift means for hands-on work such as gardening. The publication's own estimate put cleaning and maintenance work, which includes gardeners, among the biggest gainers in exposure.

Barr said he was skeptical, given how hard it is to pull a weed out by the roots. Anthropic's study notes that cleaning robots are often slower than people and several times more expensive.

The exposure ratings were produced by Claude using web search. Anthropic stresses that exposure does not mean job losses. The company has also mapped three AI economies, ranging from a mild boost to mass job loss.

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