Behind the Curtain — America's next class war: AI fluency

Anthropic just dropped the most granular data yet on who's actually using AI and how — and the findings should rattle anyone thinking AI's gains will be evenly distributed.

• It won't. In fact, it's creating a new form of economic inequality: AI fluency.

Why it matters: The Anthropic data, out Tuesday, reveals something subtler and more consequential than the "robots take your job" narrative.

• The real divide isn't between people who use AI and people who don't. It's between experienced AI users and newcomers to AI.

AI continues to pose a serious risk to any automatable jobs, which Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has warned could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar work.

• Two workflow categories doubled in prevalence between November and February: automated sales and outreach, and automated trading.
• That means people doing those tasks are in more danger of seeing that part of their job go away.

But AI will also be a growing threat to casual or unsophisticated users who fall behind their more AI-savvy peers, regardless of role or level.

• "Much of the discussion focuses on how AI is something that happens to you," Peter McCrory, Anthropic's head of economics, told us from the company's headquarters in San Francisco.
• "This analysis shows you can develop skills that make you better at getting value out of Claude or whatever large language model you want to use."

Some context: Anthropic's new report, "Anthropic Economic Index: Learning Curves," studied over 1 million conversations on the company's Claude platform last month. The headline finding: Experienced AI users get better results out of an AI model than newcomers. And the gap isn't explained by what tasks they're doing, what country they're in, or what model they're using.

• People who've used Claude for six months or more have a 10% higher success rate in their conversations with AI. "The longer you've been using it, the stronger this effect," McCrory says.
• Adoption of Claude in hypereducated Washington, D.C., is four times the adoption rate you'd expect for a city of its size.
• Globally, inequality in usage has persisted since Anthropic's last report, in January, in the 20 higher-income countries with the most Claude use.

That's a skills gap hardening into a class gap in real time. But you can escape it by experimenting, getting comfortable, getting deft, getting fluent.

• Anthropic's researchers are candid that this could be early-adopter selection bias or survivorship — maybe sophisticated users simply signed up first.
• But Anthropic's finding certainly mirrors our personal experience.

Between the lines: People think of AI as a tool, when you should think of it as a never-before-imagined toolbox — it allows you to not just automate a boring task, but stretch your abilities across most things you touch at work. But only once you start to master prompts, and pushback, and persistence when unsatisfying or unilluminating answers come back.

• Jim started using the models like most — like a search engine. But then they became his best researcher ... then idea stress-tester ... then builder of prototypes for new businesses. He's basically at the six-month mark Anthropic describes, and discovering new use cases every week.

You have to move up the AI proficiency ladder. Using a large language model as a search engine or copy editor is dumb AI. Even having it draft emails for you is like having a celebrity chef boil your water.

• The report divides tasks into "automation" (do this task) and "augmentation" — more polished, sophisticated inputs like using the LLM as a thought partner that spits out ideas and feedback, or writes a business plan, or stress-tests a business plan, or coaches and teaches you.
• Think how much more valuable AI dexterity will make you to your current organization — or how much more marketable it'll make you to a future employer.

The big picture: This report lands in the middle of the most anxious era Americans have experienced about AI and jobs since OpenAI's ChatGPT moment after the model's release in late 2022.

• An NBC News poll from earlier this month found that 57% of registered voters believe AI's risks outweigh its benefits.
• Only 26% have positive feelings about the technology — a net favorability lower than that of any other topic polled, except the Democratic Party and Iran. (AI was two points less popular than ICE.)

AI users are getting better, while AI anxiety surges and the job market deteriorates. It's a reality that Washington isn't confronting with consistency and seriousness.

• Washington is debating AI in the abstract: Should we regulate it, should we race China, should we worry about superintelligence?
• But the Anthropic report makes the near-term problem concrete: Signs of a two-tier workforce are already emerging. And neither party has a plan for people on the wrong side of it.
• What Anthropic found in observing real-world use: Skilled AI users are getting better at collaborating with Claude to do a wide variety of work, not just automate specific activities.

The bottom line: The people already using AI for high-value work may pull further ahead, with real implications for who captures the economic benefits of this technology.

• If you're not an early adopter, today's your chance.

Read the report.

• Go deeper: "How to AI."