Workers inside the top AI labs assume their jobs will eventually be automated by the tools they are building — unsettling for white-collar workers everywhere, and a sign the labs themselves see rapid progress coming.

• Staff at Anthropic widely take it as given that their own work will be automated at some point; the only open question is when.
• For now the systems still need people to run them, but nobody expects that to last.
• Anthropic has signaled it will look after employees who get displaced, an assurance OpenAI has not made publicly — and one that looks awkward next to workers at other companies who get nothing.
• Politicians on both the left and the populist right, including Bernie Sanders' office, are now chasing ex-lab insiders for input on AI job losses.
• On the investment side, Anthropic is seen as the more focused bet over OpenAI, with talk of a two-trillion-dollar IPO.

Outlook: Expect AI job-loss worries to become a mainstream political fight well before the technology actually replaces most roles.