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Eric Siu argues AI won't replace jobs long-term, pointing to tractors and ATMs as historical examples that displaced workers but created new opportunities. The key is retraining workers during the transition, not stopping automation itself.
Eric Siu argues AI won't replace jobs long-term, pointing to tractors and ATMs as historical examples that displaced workers but created new opportunities. The key is retraining workers during the transition, not stopping automation itself.
The tractor decimated farm employment but led to the greatest expansion in US history. So when you look over here, you have 12 million agricultural workers in the beginning of 1900, and then manufacturing starts to take off. And then, um, this guy Keynes, who is the economist— We are being afflicted with a new disease which some readers may not have heard the name. They will hear a great deal in the years to come, namely technological unemployment. Okay, so the tractor becomes widespread in 1917, and then what happens is you see agriculture, the green line over here, continues to go down all the way to 1970. So it goes from 12 million to 3.5 million, which is 2% of the workforce, from 41% to 2%. But what ends up happening, Neil, is employment actually goes up. So job displacement happens, okay, from this period, 1970 to 1940-ish, but it goes up over time. Right. And that's the same thing with the ATM. And when it came out, people were like, oh my God, everyone's going to lose their jobs, blah, blah, blah. There's a period of time where like, sure, there's some job displacement. But after, what happened? More banks opened, which created more employment. So I think short term, yes. Long-term, everything's going to be okay.
I'm with you. I think Marc Andreessen talked about how he believes that we're going to see a massive boom because of AI, and I agree with that. Yeah, we're seeing it actually create more employment opportunities than it did before. Yes, it's also reducing employment, but you know, it's about how can you shift people from a job that can easily be replaced, retrain them, and put them into something else.
