$15.5B Palantir CEO says AI will replace office work with manual jobs

Alex Karp, the CEO of Palantir and one of the richest tech bros in America, has his future and old age covered. It’s going to be comfortable. The rest of humanity? Citing progress in AI development, Karp predicts we’ll leave our offices and roll up our sleeves. This is a perfect example of a feudal mindset.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum (WEF) this week, Karp insisted that the future of work is vocational, and not just for those already in manufacturing or engineering, but for the majority of humanity.

His conversation with Blackrock CEO Larry Fink was typically erratic – but telling. Karp seems to believe that AI will drive most of us regular humans out of comfortable offices, and that we should be getting ready to almost literally grab some shovels.

That’s because in this world Karp envisions, work will mostly be vocational. Humanities? Doomed for extinction, presumably.

Just toil away and don’t complain

“You went to an elite school, and you studied philosophy. Hopefully, you have some other skill,” Karp said, adding that AI “will destroy humanities jobs.”

“If you’re a vocational technician, or like, we’re building batteries for a battery company, now you’re very valuable, if not irreplaceable,” Karp – who holds humanities degrees from Haverford College and Stanford Law, elite liberal arts institutions – went on.

“I mean, y’know, not to divert to my usual political screeds, but there will be more than enough jobs for the citizens of your nation, especially those with vocational training.”

There’s nothing wrong with vocational training, work, or manufacturing, of course. It’s driving the global economy, especially in the Global South, so mercilessly exploited by the elites.

But it’s the attitude. It’s extremely telling that Karp, whose net worth is $15.5 billion and who’s good pals with fellow Trump-friendly tech oligarchs, sees the rest of humanity almost as peasants, plowing away for their masters.

Where’s that productivity?

Certainly, nothing coming out of Karp’s mouth should surprise us nowadays. He proudly calls Palantir, a firm partnering with the US Department of War, “the first company to be completely anti-woke” and once said that legalizing war crimes would be good for business.

But what he claimed at Davos also diverges from reality. Yes, you might end up doing vocational work, but the office cubicles aren’t going away – millions will be sitting in those and cleaning the mistakes the AI systems will inevitably make.

Intellectual labor is also here to stay. It’s been proven time and again that AI models, however shiny (or marketed as such), cannot replace human creativity, collaborative successes, and even simple hunches that help us at work.

Plus, the reckoning seems to be beginning. According to a recent poll by professional services network PwC, more than half of CEOs are deeply concerned that gains in productivity from AI are nowhere to be found.

Fifty-six percent of CEO respondents said that “their companies aren’t yet seeing a financial return from investments in AI.”

The ChatGPT craze kicked off more than three years ago – shouldn’t it be time?

Even Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella seems to be coming up with preemptive excuses in case the whole AI bubble bursts.

Speaking at the WEF on Tuesday, Nadella said that the long-term success of AI depends on the tech being used across the broadest possible range of industries. In other words, if AI fails, it’s our fault for not using it! Also, we shouldn’t speak of AI slop, it seems.

When you want more money, you fire people

Might the AI skeptics, who claim that the technology is threatening stable careers and replacing them with gig work because the tech broligarchs want to make ever more money, be right?

The hypocrisy is at times astounding. For instance, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff was very right to call for more stringent government regulation when speaking about AI models that have become “suicide coaches” at the WEF.

Indeed, multiple lawsuits have been filed against AI companies alleging their chatbots contributed to teenage suicides and self-harm incidents.

Might the AI skeptics, who claim that the technology is threatening stable careers and replacing them with gig work because the tech broligarchs want to make ever more money, be right?

According to the AI Companion Mortality Database, at least 12 deaths have been documented between March 2023 and November 2025 in cases where AI chatbot interactions played a role.

But last year, Benioff praised AI when Salesforce announced it was dramatically reducing its customer support workforce from 9,000 to 5,000 through the deployment of AI agents.

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Ironically, just months before, Benioff challenged predictions that AI would cause massive job displacement and layoffs of white-collar workers.

In the case of Palantir’s Karp, though, the motivation to spout these kinds of predictions might be quite Trumpesque. At the WEF, he seemed to link the use of AI and the administration’s favorite topic – immigration.

“These trends really do make it hard to imagine why we should have large-scale immigration unless you have a very specialized skill,” said Karp.

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