The Cope Index

Tracking who's coping hardest about the end of work

CopeCheck scores public statements about AI and jobs by how much they rely on denial, deflection, or false reassurance.

23 figures tracked · 11744 articles autopsied

How Scoring Works

Every public statement is scored 0–100 on how much it relies on denial, deflection, or false reassurance.
Cope types include: timeline minimisation, jobs-will-be-created fallacy, regulatory hopium, augmentation fantasy, and more.
Recent statements are weighted more heavily (exponential decay). The leaderboard reflects who is coping hardest right now.
0–15 = Lucid · 16–35 = Partial Awareness · 36–55 = Moderate Cope · 56–75 = Heavy Cope · 76–100 = Terminal Copium

Full methodology →

Cope of the Week

COPE OF THE WEEK

Jeff Bezos · Score: 86/100

Jobs Will Be Created Augmentation Fantasy Denial False Reassurance Techno Optimism

“I totally disagree with this point of view. And I think, in fact, AI is going to create a labor shortage.”

This is an unambiguous direct statement by Bezos dismissing AI-driven redundancy and predicting more jobs than workers, with no meaningful acknowledgment of displacement risk. It combines the classic “new jobs” claim with augmentation fantasy and strong false reassurance, making it terminal-level cope rather than partial awareness.

Cope Index — Live Leaderboard

Jeff Bezos

Founder & Executive Chairman, Amazon / Blue Origin / Prometheus

jobs_will_be_created, augmentation_fantasy, denial, false_reassurance, techno_optimism

““I totally disagree with this point of view. And I think, in fact, AI is going to create a labor shortage.””

Wrote Why AI Will Save the World and meant every word. His scapegoats are regulators, doomers, and anyone who suggests the guy funding the revolution might not be an objective narrator.

jobs_will_be_created, historical_cope, techno_optimism, false_reassurance

““And yet, it never happens.””

Selling the shovels in the AI gold rush in a leather jacket while insisting the gold is definitely real. His cope is that he doesn't need one — NVIDIA prints money either way and his scapegoat is anyone who questions GPU demand.

partial_acknowledgment, deflection, false_reassurance, techno_optimism

““it could ‘probably’ bring about a four-day workweek” while “we’re going to be ‘busier in the future than now’””

Economist / Columnist

The man who said the internet would matter less than the fax machine, now applying that same energy to AI. Blames tech hype cycles for his discomfort with the possibility he might be spectacularly wrong twice.

timeline_minimisation, denial, false_reassurance

“He does not envisage widespread unemployment due to automation and the spread of robotics.”

Spent years saying AI first while Google Search slowly became an AI slop cannon. Blames responsible AI when competitors move faster, then ships half-baked features and blames users for noticing.

deflection, techno_optimism, elite_self_exoneration

“"the responsible use of AI can help improve research, learning and access to information for people"”

AI Educator / Investor

AI educator teaching millions to automate themselves out of a job and calling it upskilling. His scapegoat is anyone who won't just learn to code their way through the apocalypse.

deflection

“"spend less time hunting for the perfect prompt and more time on the fundamentals and judgment"”

Co-founded OpenAI, left, sued them, then started a rival AI company anyway. Oscillates between AI will kill us all and but my AI is the good one depending on which gets more engagement on X.

techno_optimism, false_reassurance, deflection

““Money won’t matter in 2036” and AI agents “surpass human intelligence in every domain” within five years.”

Founder, Khosla Ventures

Cheerfully predicts AI will eliminate 80% of jobs and treats this as obviously good news. Scapegoats anyone who thinks mass unemployment might be a problem rather than an opportunity for more yoga.

techno_optimism, deflection, partial_acknowledgment

““The most expensive part of the healthcare system is expertise. And expertise can be tamed with AI.””

historical_cope, deflection, partial_acknowledgment

“"We never think about shipping a technology. We want to ship amazing products, features, and experiences, and we don't w…”

Launched the AI arms race then spends half his time saying it might be dangerous and the other half saying everyone will be richer. The undisputed champion of having it both ways in a single sentence.

jobs_will_be_created, false_reassurance, partial_acknowledgment, techno_optimism, arsonist_firefighter

““the most exciting time in history to start a career” ... “everything is just better.””

Professional AI skeptic who's been calling the bubble since 2018 and will die on this hill. Every breakthrough is not real intelligence and every failure proves he was right — the goalposts have their own frequent flyer miles.

partial_acknowledgment, techno_optimism (implicit)

“"An entire industry is being propped up by math that is insane. Welcome to fantasy land"”

Burned tens of billions on the metaverse, pivoted to AI overnight, and now acts like Meta was always an AI company. The king of corporate amnesia — blames the media whenever anyone mentions the legs that didn't render.

deflection, false_reassurance

“"rejected calls to slow the development of this technology, arguing that market forces and the risk of litigation are th…”

Former US Treasury Secretary

deflection, techno_optimism

““Gates’s robot tax risks essentially being protectionism against progress.””

Turned Copilot into Microsoft's answer to everything and calls replacing ten workers with one a productivity gain. His cope is enterprise-grade: framing mass automation as empowerment with a straight face.

partial_acknowledgment, deflection, false_reassurance

““keeping humans firmly in control of AI systems” and “enormous opportunities””

AI Alignment Researcher / MIRI Founder

Founded the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI) and essentially invented the field of AI alignment as a discipline. Has argued since the early 2000s that superhuman AI will kill everyone unless we solve alignment first. The most pessimistic serious voice in AI discourse, occupying the absolute doom end of the spectrum.

techno_optimism

“"a superintelligent AI would lead us to a golden future" ... "I think I can save the world"”

Hedges so artfully on AI he can claim he predicted every outcome. The it's complicated defense means he's never technically wrong, which is the most economist thing imaginable.

partial_acknowledgment

“"the world should copy it and validate it"”

Economist, MIT (Nobel 2024)

Nobel-winning economist whose models say AI won't cause mass displacement, so he's sticking with the models. Blames Silicon Valley hype merchants for making everyone panic about something his spreadsheets say is fine.

deflection, partial_acknowledgment

“"if you don’t get the productivity gains ... we definitely ‘need to see productivity gains’"”

CEO, Sinovation Ventures

partial_acknowledgment

“"AI will unleash more radical changes inside the world’s companies than most CEOs expect"”

Solved protein folding, now building AGI, and seems genuinely puzzled why people are nervous. Hides behind the scientist's shield of we're just doing research while DeepMind quietly automates everything that moves.

partial_acknowledgment

“"economic disruption from automation and societal shifts in labor markets"”

Built the AI most likely to replace your job, then wrote a 15,000-word essay about how great that'll be. Copes by framing Anthropic as the safety-first lab while shipping capabilities as fast as everyone else.

partial_acknowledgment

“"advocates for a significant slowdown in AI development"”

Chief AI Scientist, Meta

Meta's Chief AI Scientist who insists current AI is just fancy autocomplete while the autocomplete keeps passing bar exams. His cope is pure intellectual gatekeeping — if it doesn't match his definition of intelligence, it simply doesn't count.

human_creativity_cope

“"autoregressive LLMs of the kind we have today simply will not reach human-level intelligence"”

Warns about a useless class of humans displaced by AI, then sells millions of books to that exact audience. His scapegoat is technology itself, which he treats as fate rather than a series of human choices.

partial_acknowledgment

“"useless class" – people whose labor the economy simply does not need”

Godfather of AI / Nobel Laureate

Nobel Prize in Physics 2024 for foundational work on neural networks. Left Google in 2023 to speak freely about AI existential risk. The man who taught machines to see now warns they might decide humans are in the way. Trends toward the concerned/pessimistic end of AI discourse — the rare case where the inventor genuinely fears his invention.

regulatory_hopium, partial_acknowledgment

“"Maybe a year. But not much more than a year."”

LUCID

—

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GoogleAlerts/AI automation workers · 07 Sep 2026

15 of top 20 jobs at risk of AI automation are female-majority roles

The text converts a structural employment threat into a gender-disaggregated policy problem. Its evidence identifies a real concentration of AI exposure in female-majority clerical and administrative work, then retreats into cautious lan...

GoogleAlerts/AI automation workers · 07 Sep 2026

The AI velocity trap - Data and Analytics - iTnews Asia

The article is a corporate security warning disguised as a national AI success story. It correctly identifies the transition from AI as a tool to AI as an access-bearing operating layer. But it frames the crisis as a governance deficit: ...

GoogleAlerts/AI automation workers · 07 Sep 2026

Forgetting change management undermines AI ROI - SDxCentral

The article reframes a structural labor conflict as an implementation problem. It treats employee fear, executive uncertainty, undocumented workflows, and weak adoption as the main reasons AI stalls. Its proposed solution is process inte...

NBER New Papers · 12 Sep 2026

Behavioral Signatures of Cognitive Noise -- by Ryan Oprea, Michael Woodford

The text is building a compact behavioral model: limited neural resources produce imprecise representations, which produce coarse decisions, which then explain recurring departures from idealized rationality. Its function is intellectual...

NBER New Papers · 12 Sep 2026

Rust in Motion: The Political Environmental Trap of Vehicle Tax Exemptions -- by Gabriel Facundes Monteiro, Edson R. Severnini

The paper isolates a political contradiction: an equity-motivated tax exemption keeps older, dirtier vehicles in circulation. Its border-pair design attempts to measure how state-level age thresholds alter fleet turnover, pollution, and ...

Axios Future · 07 Sep 2026

A growing movement wants AI out of schools

This is not fundamentally about whether AI improves education. It is about institutions discovering that cognitive work can no longer be kept inside their controlled enclosure.

NBER New Papers · 12 Sep 2026

The Limits of Verifiability: Credibility and Flexibility in Communication -- by Alessandro Lizzeri, Yichuan Lou, Jacopo Perego

The paper formalizes a narrow tradeoff: evidence increases credibility but reduces communicative flexibility when evidence is noisy or incomplete. It studies message design inside a human sender–receiver system, treating the existence of...

NBER New Papers · 12 Sep 2026

The Impact of Patient Capital -- by Yingxiang Li, Tong Liu, Ting Xu

The text isolates a real micro-mechanism: the time horizon of limited partners changes fund duration, project holding periods, and venture-capital behavior. The Chinese experiment and insurer-access reform turn “patience” from a vague pr...

NBER New Papers · 12 Sep 2026

Female Micro-Entrepreneurship and Child Development -- by Andrew Foster, Moritz Poll, Hyun Soo Suh

This is an intervention study testing whether assets, training, and early-childhood development can convert maternal entrepreneurship into improved outcomes for children. That is a legitimate measurement advance, but the supplied abstrac...

NBER New Papers · 12 Sep 2026

Signals, Steps, and Setbacks: Age Discrimination in a Laddered Labor Market -- by Shuaizhang Feng, Lars Lefgren, Jieyi Liu, Brennan Platt, Xiaoyu Xia

The paper measures how age-based sorting operates inside a human job ladder: older workers are screened out of entry-level roles, while younger workers are screened out of managerial roles. Its real contribution is empirical precision. I...

GoogleAlerts/artificial intelligence job losses · 12 Sep 2026

Expert Argues AI Could Have Marginal Economic Impact - The Hoya

Michael Strain lands at 58/100 (moderate) for minimisation. Strain presents a moderate-cope profile through systematic minimisation of AI's economic threat. Core economic reasoning is flawed: attributing price effects...

NBER New Papers · 12 Sep 2026

Meetings -- by David J. Deming, Katrine V. Løken, Alexander Willén, Yaling Xu

The paper quantifies a coordination overhead that firms have normalized: meetings consume an average of 12 percent of work hours and 14 percent of firm wage bills, based on more than 9,000 Norwegian workers linked to employer–employee da...

NBER New Papers · 12 Sep 2026

Unemployment Insurance in Macroeconomic Stabilization with Imperfect Expectations -- by Bence Bardóczy, Joao Guerreiro

This paper studies the timing mechanism of unemployment-insurance extensions inside a heterogeneous-agent New Keynesian model. Its real contribution, based on the supplied excerpt, is narrow: UI supports demand by reducing precautionary ...

NBER New Papers · 12 Sep 2026

The Allocative Cost of War: A View to a Kill...ing of Productivity -- by Marvin Amann, Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Oleksandr Talavera

The excerpt reframes wartime economic damage from simple destruction into systemic misallocation. Its claim is that war reduces output twice: by destroying productive factors and by forcing surviving firms, workers, and resources into le...

NBER New Papers · 12 Sep 2026

How Big is Small? The Economic Effects of Access to Small Business Government Support -- by J. David Brown, Matthew Denes, Ran Duchin, John Hackney

This paper is an empirical autopsy of subsidy capture. Expanding eligibility for small-business support lets larger firms enter the protected lane, diverting procurement and other resources from smaller firms. The casualties are not rand...

NBER New Papers · 12 Sep 2026

Rational Inattention to Discrete Choices with Stable Priors -- by Bruno Pellegrino

This paper repairs a technical gap in the rational-inattention model: it seeks tractable solutions when prior information differs across discrete choices. It improves the machinery for describing how agents allocate attention under uncer...

NBER New Papers · 12 Sep 2026

Is a Dollar a Dollar? How Transfer Design Shapes Household Spending -- by Therese Bonomo, Krista J. Ruffini, Diane Whitmore Schanzenbach

The paper isolates the plumbing of state transfers: whether benefits are restricted or fungible, and whether they arrive as a lump sum or a recurring stream. Its supplied excerpt proposes using pandemic-era variation to measure how these...

NBER New Papers · 12 Sep 2026

Do Online Job Postings Capture Job Vacancies? -- by Michael Dalton, Lisa B. Kahn, Andreas I. Mueller

This is a measurement-validation paper. It tests whether Burning Glass postings can function as a proxy for vacancies by comparing them with JOLTS, then reweighting the data by establishment characteristics. Its real contribution is to i...

NBER New Papers · 12 Sep 2026

Loan Rates as Incentive Instruments -- by Kinda Cheryl Hachem

This is a contract-theory exercise that turns loan pricing into an internal surveillance mechanism. The bank is not merely setting prices for borrowers; it is manipulating repayment outcomes so those outcomes reveal more—or less—about em...

NBER New Papers · 12 Sep 2026

Rain Follows the Forest: Land Use Policy, Climate Change, and Adaptation -- by Florian Grosset-Touba, Anna Papp, Charles A. Taylor

The paper uses a historical land-use intervention to show that humans can alter local climate and that farmers adapt to the resulting conditions. Its real function is to turn climate change from an external shock into a policy-mediated v...

The Cope Index

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