Kevin SuraceKevin Surace is an AI pioneer, inventor, author, and human effectiveness authority helping people thrive while AI reshapes work and life.

AI Won’t Kill Jobs, It Will Change Who Wins

23 May 2026 · 1 min

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In this excerpt, Kevin Surace reflects on the historical pattern of technology displacing specific occupations while simultaneously expanding overall employment in the United States. He uses Microsoft Excel as a concrete example: the software eliminated many ledger‑book clerks but created a new class of strategic workers who mastered Excel. Surace argues that despite repeated cycles of automation, the U.S. has consistently generated more jobs over time, suggesting that future AI advances will similarly reshape, rather than eradicate, the labor market.

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I have wrestled throughout my career of bringing technology to market because most technologies we bring to market takes some jobs away. There were people who used to do that job. It's true with Excel, Microsoft Excel. When it came to market, it wiped out slews of people that used to do ledger books with pencils in, in finance. Yet the smart people learned Excel and became strategic people right there. And so we've been replacing humans, but while doing so, at least in the US, we've actually always created more jobs. Different jobs, but we've always created— well, there are more people employed today than there have been roughly in the history of the United States. How can that be? We've been replacing jobs.