6This Is Not the Industrial Revolution
Not persuaded by our tour through the mythology of Big Tech? Good. Curiosity is a superpower, not credulity. So let's build the argument together. This is not the industrial revolution because, unlike revolutions past, all those new jobs created by AI productivity gains will fall above the “skill”-level of existing displaced workers. Don't believe me? Try this thought experiment … and be honest.
You are the CEO of a multinational company with 100,000 employees. Rate all of their jobs on a scale from “lowest” to “highest” skill.1 Now consider a near future in which AI and automation have disrupted the bottom 80% of those jobs by skill-level. Those 80,000 jobs are not needed anymore, and those lower-skilled employees are staring at pink slips. But just as with the Industrial Revolution, automation, in this case in the form of artificial intelligence, has created an equal number of high-skilled jobs. So you have 100,000 employees and 100,000 great jobs—or maybe even more. This is wonderful! Problem solved, right?
But wait, now your company needs five times as many high-skill employees. AI hasn't created any new lower-skill jobs because if they fall below the skills threshold then those jobs are in turn automated as well.2 So ask yourself these questions: will many, if any, of those lower-skilled employees be qualified to fill these new top-20% roles in your company, even with reskilling?
Take a step back. Today, how easy is it to recruit ...
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