History Repeats Itself - just faster and more brutally this time. AI - jobs and disagreeing with Prof Mollick a bit (again). The Big Picture
Not smart to argue with Ethan Mollick, especially about the current tech shift, but here goes.
See the link below about tech jobs going and the need to 'reconstruct meaning' ostensibly for coders.
The Subtext: Defending national competitiveness in this time of tech upheaval is a fool's errand. Boosting/improving national competitiveness wins. The invisible hand does not care about borders. This will require smart orchestration and thinking differently.
Adios Some Jobs
I am sympathetic to the impending near-death of coding and how that feels to seasoned coders and new Comp Sci grads. Also, to 60% of the people in Enterprise Software firms who won't have jobs in 3 years. Also over the next decade to most of the advertising anchored businesses, ditto human work that can be roboticized, drivers for heavy trucks (2.2 million of those today in the US), a third or more of the people in the US automotive sector. Plus 80% of white collar workers in the back office, middle management, HR, Finance, Customer Support, Supply Chain, and Sales.
Yes, "reconstructing meaning" as Ethan mentions, is interesting and who doesn't love a bit of Jacques Derrida philosophy. But history is clear on this sort of Industrial Revolution scale and type of shift. There will be destruction of jobs and livelihoods, which trumps some epistemological shift in meaning.
Creative Destruction - History has examples...
There is a destruction side to the creative destruction cycle and also from the inevitable bubble bursting when the period of speculation breaks. It happened to rail, it will happen to AI. Although, that is usually followed by a constructive period based on the economics of production versus the economics of speculation (read genius Carlotta Perez). This one will be harder because it is broader and faster.
We are not prepared nor are we preparing.
Historically there are brutal failures and shift during times like this. Brit middle class 1840s and the rail bubble explosion, the 'long depression' (1873) US, the death of 360 of 400 U.S. auto firms post Ford 1912, Yorkshire textiles, Glasgow shipyards, Cornwall and tin, and the Ruhr Valley. New Bedford Mass was the richest city per capita on earth until it collapsed (whaling vs kerosene and the lightbulb). In the 1820's, Manchester crushes Bengal with textiles 4x cheaper. Dhakka lost 80% of its population...to subsistence farming!
Speed Kills
This change wave is happening 5x+ faster than the prior Industrial Revolutions. The labor sector, the talent supply chain, the education system, public/private partnerships, and the financial sector are ill-prepared for this.
Also, if you look globally, the U.S. is at a structural disadvantage on talent supply chain, key infrastructure areas (energy) and frontier technologies.
Some Good News - and a bad ride on the L train and then some bad news
On a positive note, we will see a renaissance in healthcare and science, hopefully for impact much as well as profits. The longevity 'industry' is an early adopter but it often feels like longevity for the wealthy not for the populous. If you take the L train in Chicago for a 20-minute ride, life expectancy today not the 1870s, has a 30-year difference. That is deplorable in a dozen ways but economically it is indicative of a structural drain on national competitiveness. Good thing education doesn't suffer a similar geographically distributed inequality, oh wait yes it does. . Broad healthcare advances across a population turbocharge competitiveness, ditto education and talent supply chain. If you really want the scary version, look at education/research and talent supply chains (including modern factory workers) in China over the last decade and the current trajectory into the next decade. For extra scary look at what the 'genius school' part of that is in China or talent migrating away from MIT, Princeton, and the like to places like Tsinghua.
Also lowering the cost of things can shift demand curves up, which generates jobs, the creation side of creative destruction. In an economy driven by short-term market performance, where this tech wave hits 5X faster than anything we have seen , that will not be enough. I saw a recent real complex example where a software release came in 5X faster and 9x cheaper than planned because of new coding tools. Lower costs shifting demand curves won't solve for that reduction in employment demand.
The Next 10 Years
The next decade will be one of the most 'interesting' in human history. We will see what would have been deemed unthinkable advances just 5 years ago in science, healthcare, education, warfighting, construction, robotics, transportation/logistics, robotics, urbanization, energy and intelligence. Halfway through that, Quantum will throw gasoline on the fire. Part of the gravitational pull will be an unprecedented socioeconomic duo of never before seen demographic aging and the ascendency of the largest economic cohort ever seen with a different worldview (GenZ). The latter is a source of optimism for me.
p.s. The Jevon's Paradox - there is an economic case that when things get much, much cheaper people buy more and find more uses for 'it' so that creates jobs and everything is fine. This has been true in many cases (Henry Ford). Satellites are functionally 2000x cheaper per unit output over the past 15 years and growth is skyrocketing. It is worth noting that Jevons created this theory in 1865, and it was about coal. China has filed paperwork with the ITU to create three constellations comprising 200,000 satellites. But that I think is limited to nascent markets with unexplored upper demand limits. If a Subaru became 2000x cheaper over the next 15 years, would people really buy a dozen each? Harvey, the legal AI smart company, is worth $5B. It automates a ton of entry-level legal/paralegal work. Those jobs are never coming back. There isn't going to be some massive shift in the consumption of lawyer stuff. Robot repairman will really not be a big job boon either. Robots will repair robots. Repair will be a lego-ized swap out game for robots and everything else. I saw a basketball court-sized room a decade ago of huge 3D printers working 24x7. They were printing the components for more 3D printers.
