In this bonus-sized episode of The Professor Is In, I dive even deeper into the strange, wonderful case study of bootmaking in Victorian England to think through what AI might do to your work, your wages, or even where you live.
Economic historian Hillary Vipond found that even though new technology led to huge labor savings — bootmaker productivity quadrupled! — total bootmaking jobs barely budged. But underneath the surface, the type of work changed dramatically. The cordswainer disappeared; the factory foreman, machinist, and riveter arrived. (In our moment, that’s the translator seeing wages fall and the “prompt engineer” rising in their place.)
The good news: a bigger pie usually means bigger servings for all. But the catch is the speed of adjustment. If AI really replaces half of white-collar work in five years (as some tech CEOs claim), that’s a disruption far bigger than anything any of us have experienced (shoutout to COVID and the financial crisis).
My advice: become the most AI-savvy person in your workplace, keep your skills broad rather than narrow, and double down on the basics — because AI probably won’t take your job, but someone using AI might.
I've been in the technology business since before it was a business and I agree with your assessment that people should broaden their AI skill set but I've learned two things. 1. What you think is AI will not stay AI. I recall the very first revolutionary, dedicate word processor that was going to replace every typist. It did not. What replaced typist was a young fellow named Bill Gates who created the WORD application on a PC which did not exist when the dedicated word processors were invented. Now everybody is a typist. So, there will be another Bill Gates that will truly create a simpler, faster, cheaper and and easy to use AI implementation. 2. As important is the lack of data center regulations. These sprawling, resource guzzling behemoths will be replaced by smaller, more efficient and less expensive alternatives which will render them obsolete. The current owners will abandon them at some point leaving communities to deal with remediation...and they will require that. Recall the superfund sites of the 1980's. In our industry you could always identify the pioneers...they were the ones with arrows in their back. So, sharpen your skills but keep your eyes open to a different future.
Justin,
Sorry, but Adam Smith warned us of the dangers of monopolies/ologopolies. The example you need to wrestle with is the 1975 to 2015 computer and internet revolution. Mainframe computer companies largely went bankrupt, international supply chains destroyed small town factories, and the populations in many of those towns never rebounded.
The PC —IBM as an early PC leader didn’t change fast enough and is a tiny shadow of its former S&P ranking after nearly going bankrupt—eliminated a lot of secretarial/clerical jobs. As the Cambridge Analytica scandal showed, sociopathic media alters our politics. Since Reaganomics combined with tech, wealth inequality has skyrocketed. AI now nudifies our daughters, produces disinformation experts can’t detect, and the tech brologarchs buy up blocks worth of homes for their private compounds in multiple cities while most of us can’t buy a condo. They also barely pay taxes while upper middle class self employed workers face 50% (with state and FICA) marginal tax rates.
I fear what we are headed for is a tech bro feudal system. Those who enable their wealth and riches will share in their bounty, most of us will barely exist as they keep most of the value of our work and monopolize/ologopilize essential sectors. The rest will be homeless—and they’re sweeping away homeless encampments.