Anthropic’s Claude has already conquered tech stocks. Its users are wondering if they are now in its path.
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Roughly 81,000 Claude users around the world participated in an anonymous survey where they told an AI interviewer their hopes and fears for the future of AI.
“I can’t get a job in my field… you can just ask an AI tool for guidance,” a freelance software engineer based in the US told the survey. “My whole career is built on expertise that is now a click away.”
The worried vibes align with Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei’s prediction that AI will wipe out up to half of all entry-level white-collar jobs over the next one to five years. What’s even more remarkable is that the survey took place in December, months before Claude-related fears led to a software sell-off on Wall Street and spawned viral essays about the state of AI.
Here are a few of the other quotes from Claude users that stood out.
Job fears
One respondent lied to their employer about how long a project would while leaning on AI to accomplish it: “I told him I needed 3 months to build a new software feature — AI finished it in 2 weeks — and spent the rest of the time with my family… if my employer knows it’s doable in 2 weeks, he’ll expect the next one in 2 weeks too. The time gained would just turn into more stress,” a software engineer in Austria said.
A software engineer in South Korea wondered what it felt like when cars were invented: “I wonder if this is what it felt like for a coachman watching automobiles arrive… all the skills they’d honed — handling horses, maintaining wheels — suddenly useless.”
Multiple software engineers expressed unease around creating their company’s AI plans: “I personally am charged with shipping these AI systems with a goal of reducing engineering headcount by 30%, and that feels like blood on my hands,” one US engineer wrote.
An unemployed worker in France said the job market is horrendous: “I’m a software developer desperately looking for a job — the market is so dead I can’t get one. Entry-level roles that existed four years ago are just gone. When I get a generic rejection email after an interview, most of the time I’m heartbroken. But the painful truth is that the rise of AI is the reason I’m out of work,” an unemployed worker in France said.
AI was on both ends of one worker’s job loss: “I was fired because my company brought in AI, then used AI to retrain into a new job. The experience was humiliating.”
A grad student said they were racing against the clock: “I’m paying $200 out of my PhD stipend for Claude Code and other AI tools—just to compete… trying to get a few good papers published before AI takes over. I disgust myself. Human work becoming worthless is only a matter of time,” the student in Switzerland wrote.
Overall, Anthropic said that users’ biggest worry was unreliability (26.7%). Jobs and economic-related concerns were the second-highest at 22.2%, followed by autonomy and agency at 21.9%. No other category was above 20% and roughly 11% of users expressed no concern at all.
It wasn’t just angst that users expressed. Some said they wanted AI to make them more productive, but really their ultimate goal was to engage more with those around them.
The hope for AI
A US healthcare worker said AI has given them more time with patients: “I receive 100-150 text messages per day from doctors and nurses. So much of my cognitive labor was spent on just documentation… Since implementing AI, the pressure of documentation has been lifted. I have more patience with nurses, more time to explain things to family members.”
An academic in Germany said Claude has saved them years of work: “I’ve been working on a scientific project for 6 years… with Claude I was able to accomplish in 5 weeks what took me 6 years. I’m old… I estimate I have another 5 to 10 years and I’ll accomplish everything I want,”
Someone in Ukraine said AI is a needed companion in a war zone: “I live in a war zone… AI can not only give practical advice, but also emotionally calm me down during panic attacks. It can calm someone during a missile attack in one chat, and laugh with me about something silly in another. That’s what makes it not fragmented into a therapist/teacher/friend, but something whole.”
A software engineer in Japan said they can spend time with their kids: “Bug investigations that used to take a long time now finish quickly thanks to AI… now I have time to cook dinner with my kids.”
Overall, Anthropic said 18.8% of respondents hoped for professional excellence, the highest among the subcategories. The next highest was personal transformation (13.7%) and life management (13.5%).
Methodology: In December 2025, Anthropic used a specially turned AI interviewer to ask Claude users across all subscription tiers and regions four questions about AI usage. Initially, they received 112,846 responses, which were then filtered down to 80,508 interviews. They then fed the transcripts into Claude, which classified the responses based on various categories. Responses were anonymized and stripped of references to any AI tools other than Claude. You can read the entire methodology here.
