Business · Fortune Technology
AI angst mutates into 'FOBO' as Fear of Becoming Obsolete fuels quiet resistance across the economy
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There’s a new acronym reshaping how workers think about their careers: FOBO: the fear of becoming obsolete.
Key facts
- According to Goldman Sachs economists Sarah Dong and Joseph Briggs, citing Census Bureau data in their March 2026 AI Adoption Tracker, fewer than 19% of U.S. establishments have adopted AI
- Across a team of 50, that 40-to-60-minute daily time saving translates to 33 to 50 hours of recovered productivity every single day
- Management tasks came in around 53%; health care practitioners at 66%; business and financial operations at 57%
- After Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, claimed last year that AI could eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar positions within five years, he was joined within months by Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa
Summary
Four in 10 workers now name AI-driven job loss as one of their primary fears—a share that has nearly doubled in a single year, according to KPMG. After Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, claimed last year that AI could eliminate 50% of entry-level white-collar positions within five years, he was joined within months by Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, who offered a similar outlook. These are the predictions feeding FOBO, and they’re landing. MIT doesn’t use the phrase, but this is FOBO, calibrated. But the MIT data suggests the floorboards won’t be underwater by next Tuesday. Here’s the irony: Even as MIT documents AI’s sweeping capability gains, most companies have yet to deploy the tools at all.