Eric Siu argues AI won't cause mass unemployment. He points to history: agriculture lost 90% of jobs from 1900 to 1960, but new industries replaced them. Spreadsheets and AI radiology show the same pattern, creating more work than they eliminate.
People that say that AI is going to lead to mass unemployment are being ridiculous. Let me show you a couple charts over here. Alright, so just look at this chart from CO2. So you can see that 1900 to 1960, you can see 12 million agricultural workers drops to 3.5 million. So 2% of workforce. But even though agriculture lost 8 million jobs, it gained— new industries gained 46 million jobs. So you got a 5x return on displacement. But that's not all. The spreadsheet, yes, the spreadsheet, yes, it reduced bookkeepers in the blue over here, so that fell off. But what happened is other jobs were created. So like financial analysts, accountants, and auditors. And you can see you got a 3x return on displacement. And then look at this, people that said radiologists are screwed, look, radiologists in terms of medical devices, 78% of all cleared AI-enabled medical devices were for radiology, and that job is in more demand than ever. So, is there gonna be job displacement short-term? Yes, but long-term, everything's gonna be good. Long-term, there's gonna be more abundance. And by the way, if you want more on AI, business, and marketing, just comment newsletter and we'll send you more stuff.
