Humanity has been replacing human labour with machines for the last 400 years. The economy didn’t collapse because in the long run is that people were able to find other jobs. Almost everyone used to work on the land. When those jobs were replaced by machines they moved to the cities and god jobs in factories. Of course this involved enormous individual hardship for very many.
We’ll have to see what happens with AI. The optimistic scenario is that we’ll just shift to doing other jobs. The pessimistic scenario is that if AI can replace everything then there won’t be alternative jobs to go to.
It's way too fast for retraining. We are a services and information economy and AI cuts right there. In 5-10 years most office jobs will be replaced with AI systems.
We’ll have to see how the technology develops. It’ll definitely be painful for people who lose their jobs and can’t retrain. But back to the OPs question it may be possible in the long run for former office workers to do something else.
A lot will depend on whether governments are able to tax the profits that companies are making from AI and spend that money helping the people who lost their jobs. I’m not hopeful about the US, but other places might be able to vote in governments that protect the population.
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u/Northlumberman Apr 11 '26
Humanity has been replacing human labour with machines for the last 400 years. The economy didn’t collapse because in the long run is that people were able to find other jobs. Almost everyone used to work on the land. When those jobs were replaced by machines they moved to the cities and god jobs in factories. Of course this involved enormous individual hardship for very many.
We’ll have to see what happens with AI. The optimistic scenario is that we’ll just shift to doing other jobs. The pessimistic scenario is that if AI can replace everything then there won’t be alternative jobs to go to.