I think @Levie is overstating the positive case for employment in the (near term) AI era but that most people have overstated the negative case, and that the truth is somewhere in between. Which is to say there will be some new jobs, some lost jobs—and that the overall net effect won’t be huge in the next few years. My prediction for 2025 (which proved to be correct) was “Less than 10% of the work force will be replaced by AI. Probably less than 5%”. I will stand by that prediction for 2026, as well. cc @DavidSacks
The jobs data coming out continues to suggest the opposite of what a lot of people had thought would happen. Just take engineering, as the prime example of the area with greatest AI impact (and perceived risk). Most companies now have far more software projects than ever before because of AI, and effectively only engineers are going to be the ones doing that work. You can get by for a while by being non-technical building software, but eventually someone has to understand what the thing is that got built, has to maintain it, has to fix security issues that come up, upgrade the systems beneath it, and so on. That’s all jobs. Now apply that to a number of other job functions. AI is going to cause companies to hire more in sales because agents can let them process more leads and do more customer research. AI will cause an explosion of new marketing roles because of how much more efficient it is to launch campaigns and target. The list goes on. AI is going to have the opposite effect that lots of people thought on jobs.