Will AI Take Your Job, & When?

FUTURE

Will AI Take Your Job, and When?

With the release of Deep Research tools by the likes of OpenAI, Google, and most recently, Perplexity (cheapest option by far and reasonably well tested against the others), concerns about job safety and displacement due to AI are growing.

But we know history repeats, so does history support these fears? And if so, what skills will be necessary to survive in an AI world?

Today:

We’ll discuss the impact timelines previous industrial revolutions had on the economy, discussing important milestones and the Baumol effect.

We’ll examine the most recent research on adoption and productivity from one top University and one top AI lab, showcasing how adoption is never what it seems.

We’ll understand what it means to be an ‘AI Human.’ Just as the world saw the rise of the Renaissance man in the 15th century, we will cover the essential skills of the AI human, a person who, be it an employee or an entrepreneur, embraces AI and thrives above everyone else.

Finally, I will give you the best mental model to analyze whether AI will take your job. And let me tell you, every single person around you is approaching this question wrong.

Let’s dive in.

A Brief History Review

AI is considered the next industrial revolution. But what does that even mean?

Change Takes Time.

Back in 1820, agriculture was the dominant occupation in the United States (and in most countries), with an aggregate presence of 72% over total gainful work.

Today, that value has dropped below 2% in the US, with most developed countries below the 5% mark (the global average is still high, at 26%)

Source

But why? The answer was mechanization. Better farm equipment and the advent of steam power led to a series of productivity improvements, like the mechanical reaper of the steel plow (1831 and 37, respectively).

Over time, the growing use of railroads and transportation of crops to distant markets shifted farming from subsistence to commercial. This led to a shift in jobs, from railroad to other forms of manufacturing, the former of which represented 10% of UK labor by 1850. This, led by the advent of coal, led to a gradual transition toward these new jobs, and while agriculture remained the main job source for the rest of the 19th century, by 1900, it had gone down to 40%, while industry rose to 26%.

Source

Of course, all this change severely impacted some, such as weavers, who saw a 65% decline in wages (despite a 400% increase in textile output).

Yes, some jobs were displaced, and McKinsey predicts 12 million job displacements by the end of the decade in the US alone due to AI. But which, and when?

That said, to summarize, because I don’t want to bore you with too much history, the key insight is that:

Change took time. Decades, in fact, so why would AI be any different?

To answer this, were other industrial revolutions more sudden?

Change…

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