AI's most powerful CEOs are splitting into warring camps over whether their own technology will gut white-collar work or supercharge it — but the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle.

Why it matters: The two leading AI labs are trading in hype and doom, making it nearly impossible for companies, policymakers and the public to know what's coming.

The big picture: A pair of public appearances this week highlighted how far apart Anthropic and OpenAI are.

• Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, speaking Sunday at the Vatican's AI ethics conference, doubled down on rhetoric CEO Dario Amodei has used about the dangers of AI. "There is a real possibility that AI will displace human labor at very large scale," Olah said.
• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman is sounding rosier about the tech. He said it's unlikely to cause a jobs apocalypse and that he was "wrong" about earlier projections that it would wipe out entire categories of jobs.
• "I'm delighted to ⁠be wrong about this, I thought there would have been more impact on entry-level white-collar jobs being eliminated by now than ​has actually happened," Altman told Commonwealth Bank of Australia CEO Matt Comyn.

Driving the news: A spate of tech company layoffs in recent weeks has given fresh fodder to the "doomer" camp.

• Meta let go nearly 8,000 employees, after projecting at least $125 billion in AI capital expenditures this year.
• That came after Coinbase, Block, Pinterest, Shopify and others tied workforce restructurings to AI capabilities.
• "AI costs a lot of money" and layoffs can offset those costs, Sophia Velastegui, Microsoft's former chief AI officer and now CEO at Velastegui Ventures, told Axios.

Yes, but: There's also recent evidence pointing in the other direction. While unemployment has ticked up since 2023, it has predominantly been in sectors with the least exposure to AI, according to Stanford researchers.

• Software engineering job openings on Indeed are up over 18% since January 2024, while all openings are down 4.3% over the same period.
• LinkedIn's chief economist recently said AI has led to around 1.3 million new job postings.

Reality check: Some technology giants are scaling back their AI usage after finding that the promise of huge productivity gains hasn't materialized.

• Uber's COO said AI costs are getting "harder to justify" weeks after his chief technology officer blew through his 2026 IT budget on AI usage.
• Microsoft is winding down some of its Claude Code licenses, according to The Verge, a move Fortune tied to their enormous costs.

The bottom line: No one really knows how the AI jobs story will play out. The most likely scenario: widespread displacement in some sectors, job growth in others, and an uneven transition that defies a clean narrative for either side.

Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta are teaming up with a nonprofit investor to accelerate new technologies using data centers as test cases.

Driving the news: The initiative aims to use data centers as real-world proving grounds for advanced cooling, energy storage and low-carbon building materials.

"We see data centers as really important customers for entrepreneurs to commercialize technologies that we've been working on for a long time," said Dawn Lippert, CEO and founder of Elemental Impact, the nonprofit investment firm spearheading the initiative.

The big picture: The AI boom is driving a historic surge in electricity demand, increasing fossil fuel use and putting climate goals — including those of major tech companies — on the back burner.

• Opposition to data centers is also growing, fueled by concerns about rising power prices and AI displacing jobs.

"This initiative is coming at the most perfect time because the priorities they have are literally the same priorities that you're hearing from communities," said Ryan Panchadsaram, a top advisor to venture capitalist John Doerr at Kleiner Perkins.

• Panchadsaram, whose firm is not involved in the initiative, said those include Elemental Impact's focus on community engagement and supporting technologies that enable more efficient use of energy and water.

Follow the money: Elemental will invest between $500,000 and $5 million in up to 10 startups through 2027 to support pilot projects in data centers.

• The tech companies are not formally committing investment dollars, though that remains a possible outcome, Lippert and others involved said.
• They did provide funding to help launch the effort and will pay annual membership fees.

Yes, but: That investment range is relatively small in the world of cleantech. Lippert said the group settled on that amount partly to move quickly over the next year — and because the initiative's value extends beyond funding.

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Biohub, the Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan-funded institute, today released what it says amounts to "a world model of protein biology."

Why it matters: Biohub says the system can compress years of protein research into hours or days, potentially speeding up disease research and treatment development.

Driving the news: Biohub says the release includes a protein-structure prediction model, a protein language model and ESM Atlas, a map of 6.8 billion proteins and 1.1 billion predicted structures.

What they're saying: "What we've shown is that these models have learned such a high-fidelity world model of biology that you can design protein interfaces computationally, take them into the laboratory and they function as predicted," Biohub head of science Alex Rives said in a statement.

The big picture: A number of efforts see curing disease as one of the most impactful ways to use AI.

• Isomorphic Labs, a spinout from Google, has raised more than $2 billion to fund AI-based drug discovery.
• In April, OpenAI announced a series of models aimed at helping accelerate biological research, while Anthropic has set up its own life sciences effort.
• Meanwhile, Biohub said in April it was investing a further $500 million as part of a Virtual Biology Initiative to help create better AI simulations of the human body.

Yes, but: This work is still steps away from designing a drug that passes clinical trials and any therapeutic use would require more safety testing.

The bottom line: Biohub is betting AI can make biology more programmable — allowing scientists to test ideas computationally before moving into the lab.

• Chipmaker Micron hit a $1 trillion valuation yesterday. (Bloomberg)
• Y Combinator co-founder Paul Graham is tired of AI-generated emails from founders. (Business Insider)
• OpenAI has appointed Colin Fleming, formerly of ServiceNow, as its chief marketing officer. (LinkedIn)

Engineers are rejoicing with memes after several companies appeared to throw cold water on the idea of AI replacing full tech teams.

• Microsoft is reportedly dialing back on Claude Code licenses, and Uber's COO is worried about AI ROI.

Why it matters: It feels like companies are following in the footsteps of graduating students booing commencement speakers when they mentioned AI.

• AI pushback doesn't appear to be isolated to consumers anymore — it's also entering the enterprise.