Why We Don't Talk About Job Destruction
...but we must.
“Scaling Helix - Logistics” by Figure
What We Believe, But Can't Say
The unspoken truth in tech is that AI is causing significant job destruction.
And "significant" will soon reach "concerning."
No one in the know debates those facts, and no one in the know wants to debate those facts -- at least not publicly.
The only debate that matters is whether job displacement will be manageable or disastrous.
When job destruction was still theoretical, a whopping five years ago, we used to discuss it.
We debated three solutions:
A Universal Basic Income foundation
New job creation
... and my favorite, AI vacation!
All this was before ChatGPT was released and management started sending each other eggplant emojis in Slack, about how much smaller teams could be. 10%? 20%?
Hiring was put on hold as management "ADDed" all the tasks. "Automate, Deprecate and Delegate" is the rallying cry.
They stopped hiring anyone who wasn't working on [ checks notes ], job-replacing technology, as management's sole directive became "automate your underlings out of their jobs."
Management's reward for retiring "directs" is that they, too, will be retired at the end of this movie — Blade Runner style.
High: The End of Corporate Chores
The truth is, no CEO ever wanted to hire humans to do chores.
It's a last resort to create a customer support department. You do that after you've exhausted all efforts to make your product idiot-proof and provide online documentation.
Management only hires SDRs to find the Glenngary leads that aren't already in the CRM.
Anything that used to be called paperwork, from the mailrooms and typing pools that disappeared in the 1990s to the workflow automation software that was retired in the twenty-first, was simply a chore to support the actual business.
Low: The Fastest Job Destruction in Human History
Five hundred million people work in factories in major nations that track jobs (think China, the USA, Japan, Germany, India, and South Korea).
These factories, designed for humans, are by default well-suited for humanoid robots powered by large language models.
Figure Robots, which was mocked in The Wall Street Journal when their BMW partner flip-flopped on describing the nature of their beta trial, released a "How you like me now?" video last week.
In it, a humanoid robot sorted packages perfectly.
For an hour.
A week later, Andy Jassy wrote an AI manifesto warning that AI would cause Amazon to have a "smaller footprint."
That's code for 'prepare for layoffs' and 'buy the stock, cause earnings 'bout ta rip!'
For 24 hours a day, these $10,000 robots will get the job done without bathroom breaks or threatening a union drive.
They cost less than $1 an hour.
And while they'll stay in the factories, they'll soon be knocking on your door and handing a "same-hour package" to your home robot to unbox and place in the cupboard.
While writing this at a Cuban cafe in West Hollywood, puffing on a Montecristo #3, I watched as two different R2D2-style robots delivered food while avoiding Waymos in the intersection.
That's three retired jobs converged at one intersection.
Zipline is delivering thousands upon thousands of packages in Dallas by drone as we speak. DoorDash and Amazon have their homemade drone systems ready to go.
Waymo, Zoox, Tesla, WeRide, Pony, VW, and Uber are all in various stages of deployment for ride-sharing in the USA — with another two dozen firms hard at work outside our shores.
Tens of millions of people deliver stuff and move folks around in the USA -- hundreds of millions globally.
The majority of those jobs will be retired in 10 years.
All of this has happened slowly, but we're entering the "all at once" moment.
Stop Talking Bout it JCal
As I've become more vocal about this issue, I've been pulled aside and asked to shush.
Publicly, they're shaming me as an "AI doomer" and DECEL, which is an odd experience since, for my whole life, they told me, "Stop being so fucking optimistic!"
In tech, they teach you early and often that it's our job to build, not worry about the fallout, because "someone is gonna build it anyway, so we might as well get this paper!"
And there is truth to the inevitability of technology. But while this transition will be manageable, it will only be so if we openly discuss and tell the truth to the public: it's gonna be hard.
So, let's talk about it on the pod and at the poker game, in the socials and on the streets.
Because last week, when LA rioted for the 87th time in the previous decade, they didn't burn the cop cars -- they summed the Waymos to the slaughter.
LA Protestors Target Waymo Driverless Cars by WSJ News
That was the opening salvo of the resistance. I suggest we listen.
best, JCal
jason@calacanis.com
I think full automation of lots of jobs will take longer than most people think. I’ve written about why in past. Having said that, It’s very possible that over next 5-10 years augmentation is the main pattern over automation so that copilots dominate fully autonomous agents or tools.
So, what do companies do with this extra productivity from power users? Get even more productivity from same headcount or cut headcount and invest in other areas (buying market share, advertising, exec payouts, more automation where it works, etc)?
We will see some real unemployment from this process — unknown how much or how bad. It doesn’t have to be massive to destabilize specific economic regions and radicalize political outcomes.
UBI is needed, but it’s not gonna replace a white collar income in any major area — and not gonna be at levels that make it even viable for white collar worker in a major city. And no one is talking about Universal Basic Meaning. When your whole identity is connected to your education and career and your cost of living in a major city is $10-$15k/month or more), $1-$2k in month in UBI leaves you highly depressed and pissed off and ready to break things.
Asking government to solve his at the federal level isn’t gonna work. The foundation model companies and funders have to get serious about driving towards better social outcomes and coordinating on what they build, allow API usage for, celebrate and fund.
We can do things like create AIM (augmentation impact metric) and have companies self report augmentation vs automation with tax credits and cap and trade type credits connected.
Foundation model companies can build systems to monitor and limit the most job destroying uses. It won’t be easy, but it would be smart to maintain a strong middle class if we want US to stay a democracy.
How can we afford a delivery or a home robot if we’ve been replaced? 🤨