Mistral AI CEO highlights risk of AI 'Deskilling' workers
Arthur Mensch, co-founder and CEO of Mistral AI, isn't buying the hype about AI wiping out jobs.
At VivaTech in Paris, he called mass unemployment fears "very much of an overstatement."
Instead, he's more concerned that people might lose critical thinking skills if they rely too much on AI—a risk known as "deskilling."
'It's going to be more about shifting the type...'
Mensch pushed back on claims (like Anthropic's Dario Amodei saying half of entry-level white-collar jobs could vanish), arguing that smart design can keep humans in the loop.
"It's a risk that you can avoid...if you make sure that you have the right human input," he explained.
Mensch thinks AI will shift what we do
Rather than replacing people, Mensch thinks AI will shift what we do—moving tasks toward roles where human judgment matters most.
"It's going to be more about shifting the type of work that you do," he said.
Who is Arthur Mensch?
Born in 1992 near Paris, Mensch co-founded Mistral AI in 2023 after stints at Google DeepMind and top French universities.
His company builds open-source language models—and he just made Time's 2024 list of most promising innovators.