For the past few months, Wall Street has been fretting about artificial intelligence--the force behind the powerful three-year rally in stocks. Since OpenAI launched ChatGPT on November 30, 2022, the NASDAQ Composite had rallied more than 106% on the promise of huge productivity gains for businesses. But lately, financial analysts had begun to worry about the impact AI could have on the business models of Software-as-a-Service ("SaaS") companies that make up nearly a third of the U.S. stock market. These fears spiked in early February when Anthropic released a legal GenAI tool that could "do document reviews, flag risk, and even compliance work." AI went from being revolutionary for businesses to being an existential threat for many of them. Through March 6, the S&P 500 Software Industry Index is now down over 30% from its peak.
Anthropic didn't stop there. A few days ago, it released a white paper mapping out which jobs AI could potentially replace. And it's not pretty...particularly for college educated white-color workers. The radar chart below (click to enlarge) shows what % of jobs in a particular industry can be done by AI (blue shade) versus what is % is actually done by AI currently (red shade).
Source: Anthropic. Massenkoff and McCrory (March 5, 2026)
What Anthropic is predicting is that AI will soon take over nearly all the jobs in management, finance, computer science, engineering, life sciences, legal, and office administration! Conversely, AI will not really touch traditional blue-collar work: farming, construction, plumbing, food & serving, security, driving (Waymo?). That begs the question is a $300,000 college education really worth it in tomorrow's job market? Perhaps?
But, as usual, it is South Park that manages to capture the zeitgeist and provide some wonderful insights about where technology is taking society. Enjoy.
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