Will AI Take Our Jobs? Yes... BUT...
Every major technology killed millions of jobs. Every single time, we ended up better off. Here’s what history teaches us about the AI revolution.
WORD OF THE DAY: Creative Destruction
What It Is: The economic process where new innovations destroy old industries while simultaneously creating new ones. Named by economist Joseph Schumpeter, it’s the cycle that’s been upgrading human civilization for centuries.
The Pattern: Jobs disappear → People panic → New jobs emerge → Civilization gets better → Repeat.
Today’s Question: Is AI different, or is this just the latest remix of a very old song? Read to the end to find out…
Let’s Get Real About Job Loss
Yes, AI is going to take your job.
Or your kid’s job. Or your neighbor’s job. Or maybe just parts of everyone’s jobs.
The question isn’t IF jobs will disappear (they absolutely will). The question is: Then what?
To answer that, we need to look at history. Because this exact same panic has happened over and over again. And every single time, the pessimists were wrong.
Not a little wrong. Catastrophically wrong.
Let’s walk through the greatest hits of technological job destruction and see what actually happened.
The Greatest Hits: When Technology “Destroyed Civilization”
The Mechanical Loom (1800s)
Jobs Crushed: Handloom weaving across the UK. Skilled weavers who spent years learning their craft suddenly couldn’t compete with machines. Wages fell. People were FURIOUS.
The Backlash: The Luddites literally broke into factories and smashed the machines. The Lancashire power-loom riots started April 24, 1826. These weren’t just protests—this was violent rebellion against technology.
What Actually Happened:
What It Killed: Cottage weaving, handloom textiles, artisanal local cloth production
What It Created: Factory mill jobs, machine repair, logistics, export operations, mass garment production, textile mills, industrial machinery, mass apparel retail, export-driven trade
Civilization Upgrade: Cloth became cheap enough for everyone. Britain dominated global textile production. Mass-market clothing became normal. Ready-to-wear fashion became possible.
The Verdict: We traded slow, expensive, artisanal cloth for affordable clothing for everyone. Was it painful for handloom weavers? Absolutely. But their great-great-grandchildren had closets full of clothes instead of owning 2-3 outfits for life.
The Steam Engine (1700s-1800s)
Jobs Crushed: Home-based crafts and small workshop manufacturing couldn’t compete with factory output. Animal-powered labor collapsed. Small water-mill production died. Manual production across entire sectors vanished.
What Actually Happened:
What It Killed: Home-based production, animal-powered transport, small workshop manufacturing
What It Created: Factory labor at scale, coal mining, railroad workers, steam shipping crews, boiler manufacturing, mechanical engineering, industrial logistics, railroads, industrial manufacturing, steam shipping, mechanized mining, heavy engineering
Civilization Upgrade: Made power portable and scalable. Enabled modern infrastructure, urbanization, and global trade at a level that was previously impossible.
The Verdict: We traded local, limited production for industrial-scale output that fed and clothed billions of people.
Electricity + The Power Grid (Late 1800s-Early 1900s)
Jobs Crushed: The entire gas-lighting ecosystem, including the profession of “lamp lighter” (people who literally walked around lighting street lamps every evening). Many manual production steps became electrified and automated.
What Actually Happened:
What It Killed: Gas-lighting services, manual power-transfer systems, home-service labor
What It Created: Electric utilities (generation/transmission), electricians, appliance manufacturing, electrified factories, modern office work, electrically-enabled services and entertainment, consumer appliances, electrified manufacturing, elevators, HVAC, modern services economy
Civilization Upgrade: Reliable power made modern cities possible. Factories could run 24/7. Refrigeration prevented food spoilage. Elevators enabled skyscrapers. Productive hours extended beyond daylight.
The Verdict: We traded gas lamps for electric everything. Lamp lighters lost their jobs. Everyone else got refrigerators, washing machines, and cities that don’t sleep.
The Assembly Line (1913)
Jobs Crushed: Skilled craft manufacturing. Small-scale producers who couldn’t match the speed and price of standardized production.
What Actually Happened:
What It Killed: Craft auto-building, small manufacturers
What It Created: Massive factory ecosystems, supplier networks, distribution, dealership/service networks, quality control, industrial engineering, mass manufacturing, industrial operations management, modern consumer goods production
Civilization Upgrade: Made complex products affordable for the masses. A Ford Model T cost $850 in 1908 (about $28,000 today). By 1925, it cost $260 (about $4,500 today). Cars went from luxury items to middle-class necessities.
The Verdict: We traded expensive hand-built cars for affordable mass-produced ones. Craft carriage makers lost. Everyone else got cars.
Internal Combustion Engine + Cars (Early 1900s)
Jobs Crushed: The entire horse-based transport economy. Carriage makers, farriers (horseshoe makers), stables, feed supply chains. Hundreds of thousands of jobs tied to horses disappeared.
The Reality Check: In 1900, New York City had about 100,000 horses producing 2.5 million pounds of manure per day. The streets were literally covered in horse shit. Experts predicted cities would be buried in manure by 1930.
What Actually Happened:
What It Killed: Horse transport economy, carriage manufacturing, stable operations
What It Created: Auto manufacturing, mechanics, parts/tire supply, oil and gas, fueling stations, highway construction, logistics, roadside economy (motels, fast food, big-box retail), automotive industry, petroleum industry, road infrastructure, suburban development, modern logistics
Civilization Upgrade: Mass mobility reshaped cities and labor markets. Enabled modern supply chains. Massively expanded access to jobs, goods, and services. (And cities stopped drowning in horse manure.)
The Verdict: We traded horses for cars. Farriers lost. Everyone else got mobility, suburbs, and clean streets.
Refrigeration + Cold Chain (Late 1800s-Early 1900s)
Jobs Crushed: The commercial natural ice trade. Before refrigeration, people harvested ice from frozen lakes in winter, stored it in insulated warehouses, and delivered it to homes and businesses. Entire industries built around cutting, storing, and delivering ice vanished.
What Actually Happened:
What It Killed: Natural ice harvesting and delivery, local-only preservation trades
What It Created: Refrigerated warehousing, refrigerated transport, modern grocery stores, large-scale food processing, global meat/produce distribution, cold-chain logistics, supermarkets, industrial food processing, modern restaurant scaling
Civilization Upgrade: Reduced spoilage, improved food safety and nutrition, enabled dense urban living, normalized year-round food availability. You can eat strawberries in January because of this technology.
The Verdict: We traded ice delivery for refrigeration. Ice harvesters lost. Everyone else got fresh food year-round and way less food poisoning.
Container Shipping (1950s-1970s)
Jobs Crushed: Traditional longshore labor. Before containers, dock workers manually loaded and unloaded every single piece of cargo. A ship could sit in port for weeks. Containerization automated this and decimated dock labor.
What Actually Happened:
What It Killed: Traditional dock labor, inefficient freight-handling intermediaries
What It Created: Intermodal logistics (ship-rail-truck), mega-port operations, supply chain management, expanded global manufacturing, globalized retail, modern logistics, mega-ports
Civilization Upgrade: Collapsed the time and cost of shipping goods. Made globalization economically viable. Lowered the price of consumer goods worldwide. That cheap TV you bought? Container shipping made it possible.
The Verdict: We traded slow, expensive manual cargo handling for fast, cheap containerized shipping. Dock workers lost. Everyone else got cheaper everything.
Microprocessor + Cheap Computing (1970s-1980s)
Jobs Crushed: Massive amounts of clerical work. Typing pools (rooms full of typists), routine bookkeeping, repetitive office workflows. If your job was copying numbers from one ledger to another, you were done.
What Actually Happened:
What It Killed: Analog control systems, routine clerical labor
What It Created: Software engineering, IT services, cybersecurity, digital product industries, embedded systems, modern automation roles across every sector, personal computing, enterprise software, embedded/IoT
Civilization Upgrade: Put computation everywhere. Reduced coordination costs. Accelerated innovation cycles. Became core infrastructure for finance, science, manufacturing, and communications.
The Verdict: We traded rooms full of typists for computers on every desk. Typing pools lost. Everyone else got spreadsheets, word processors, and the entire information age.
The Internet + Email (1990s-2000s)
Jobs Crushed: Classified-driven newspapers, travel agents, physical media retail (music/video stores), brick-and-mortar retail, countless intermediary businesses.
What Actually Happened:
What It Killed: Print classifieds, physical media retail, intermediary sales channels
What It Created: E-commerce, digital marketing, web/software development, online education, creator economies, massive fulfillment/logistics operations, search/ads, social platforms, online services, global remote collaboration
Civilization Upgrade: Dropped the cost of distributing information close to zero. Enabled new markets and business formation. Became the backbone of the knowledge economy. You’re reading this newsletter because of this technology.
The Verdict: We traded Blockbuster for Netflix. Tower Records for Spotify. Travel agents for Expedia. Mall shopping for Amazon. Some intermediaries lost. Everyone else got infinite choice and lower prices. (Though I do miss Blockbuster and Tower.)
Cloud Computing (2000s-2010s)
Jobs Crushed: On-premise infrastructure roles. If your job was maintaining physical servers in a company data center, AWS just ate your lunch (BTW - AWS is by far the most profitiable division of Amazon).
What Actually Happened:
What It Killed: On-prem software licensing, enterprise hardware procurement
What It Created: DevOps/SRE, cloud architecture, cloud security, SaaS products, exponentially more startups (because infrastructure became pay-as-you-go), hyperscaler platforms (AWS/Azure/GCP)
Civilization Upgrade: Dramatically lowered the cost and time to build and scale software globally. A teenager with a laptop can now deploy software to millions of users. That wasn’t possible before.
The Verdict: We traded running your own servers for renting cloud services. In-house data center admins lost. Everyone else got infinite scalability without buying hardware, and billion-dollar startups built in dorm rooms.
Smartphone (2007-Present)
Jobs Crushed: Standalone device markets (GPS units, MP3 players, cameras), accelerated print media collapse, service intermediaries (travel booking, taxi dispatch).
What Actually Happened:
What It Killed: GPS devices, MP3 players, compact cameras, print advertising
What It Created: App economy, mobile commerce, mobile advertising, gig platforms (Uber/DoorDash), fintech, creator/influencer economy, mobile payments, mobile-first commerce
Civilization Upgrade: Put computing + communications + navigation + payments + services + photography + filming in everyone’s pocket. Your phone is more powerful than the computers that put humans on the moon. And it fits in your pocket.
The Verdict: We traded multiple devices for one. Garmin GPS makers lost. Everyone else got a supercomputer in their pocket that does everything. Does anyone remember Kodak, the inventor of the digital camera?
Broadcasting: Radio → Television (1920s-1950s)
This is a two-part story worth understanding.
Radio (First Wave - 1920s-1930s):
Jobs Crushed: Local live entertainment, small-scale promotion
What Actually Happened:
What It Killed: Many local-only entertainment and promotion models; some older advertising channels lost attention
What It Created: National broadcast networks, radio production (writers, actors, engineers), advertising agencies built around mass audio, mass-media journalism and entertainment
Civilization Upgrade: First true mass broadcast medium. Shaped national culture. Accelerated news distribution. Created modern advertising-driven media.
Television (Second Wave - 1940s-1950s):
Jobs Crushed: TV didn’t kill radio, but it destroyed radio’s dominance. Radio drama and variety programming lost audiences fast. Stations had to reinvent themselves around music and talk.
What Actually Happened:
What It Killed: Radio-first entertainment, radio’s premium ad market
What It Created: Large-scale TV production, local stations, national networks, broadcast engineering, TV-focused advertising, syndicated content, ratings/measurement, television networks, video advertising, modern entertainment production, TV news
Civilization Upgrade: Made mass media visual. Reshaped politics and culture. Standardized consumer behavior. Turned live events into shared national experiences.
The Verdict: We traded radio dominance for television dominance. Radio reinvented itself. Everyone else got to watch moon landings, presidential debates, and sitcoms from their living rooms.
The Pattern You Can’t Ignore
Let’s zoom out and look at what ACTUALLY happened every single time:
The Cycle (Every Single Time)
New technology emerges
Old jobs get destroyed (often violently, quickly, and painfully)
People panic and predict the end of work/society/world (Luddites smashing machines, experts predicting permanent unemployment)
New jobs emerge (usually in categories that didn’t exist before)
More total jobs exist than before (every single time)
Civilization gets measurably better (cheaper goods, more access, higher quality of life)
Repeat
What History Actually Shows:
The Pessimists Were Always Wrong
When the loom was invented, people said mass unemployment was inevitable
When electricity arrived, people said it would destroy jobs forever
When computers arrived, people said machines would replace all workers
Every. Single. Time. They. Were. Wrong.
Why? Because they couldn’t imagine the new jobs that would be created.
In 1900, could a farrier imagine the job of “social media manager”? Could a typist imagine “cloud security architect”? Could a lamplighter imagine “app developer”?
Of course not. The new jobs don’t exist yet.
The Brutal Truth:
Yes, your specific job might disappear. That part is real and it will be painful for people in those jobs.
But the historical pattern is crystal clear:
Short term: Displacement and pain for workers in dying industries
Medium term: Transition period as new jobs emerge
Long term: More jobs, better jobs, higher standard of living
We’ve run this experiment a dozen times. The result is always the same.
So What About AI? Is It Different This Time?
Here’s the honest answer: Maybe. But probably not.
Every generation thinks THEIR technology is the one that’s different. The Luddites thought the mechanical loom was different. Dock workers thought containerization was different. Typists thought computers were different.
They were all wrong.
But let's consider the strongest argument that AI actually IS different:
Why AI Might Be Different:
Speed: AI is advancing faster than any previous technology
Scope: AI can potentially affect ALL knowledge work, not just one sector
Intelligence: Previous tech replaced muscle, AI replaces brain
Universality: AI can learn ANY task, unlike specialized machines
These are legitimate concerns. AI IS different in some ways.
But here’s what the pessimists are missing:
Why AI Probably Follows The Same Pattern:
Humans are adaptable: We’ve adapted to every previous disruption
New problems emerge: As old problems get solved, new challenges appear that require human judgment
Creativity compounds: AI makes creation cheaper, so MORE creation happens (just like cheap cloth led to the fashion industry)
Comparative advantage still exists: Even if AI is better at everything, humans will still do the things AI is LEAST good at
Demand is infinite: There’s no limit to human wants and needs. As AI makes things cheaper, demand expands into new areas
My Prediction: What AI Will Kill and Create
Based on the pattern, here’s my best guess at what’s coming:
Jobs AI Will Likely Kill (Next 10 Years):
Customer Service Reps: AI can already handle 90% of support tickets better and faster than humans.
Data Entry Clerks: If your job is moving information from one system to another, AI does this instantly.
Basic Bookkeeping: AI can categorize transactions, match receipts, and generate reports without human help.
Simple Copywriting: AI can generate blog posts, product descriptions, and social media posts at scale.
Transcription Services: AI transcription is already better and cheaper than humans.
Basic Research/Analysis: “Find me 10 articles about X and summarize them” is AI’s sweet spot.
Routine Legal Work: Contract review, document discovery, basic legal research.
Basic Graphic Design: Logo variations, social media graphics, website designs, simple layouts.
Translation (Simple): Basic document translation is already automated.
Scheduling/Calendar Management: AI can coordinate schedules better than human assistants (wait until you meet my new schedule app I’m Vibe Coding called Bubbal).
Telemarketing: AI voice calls are will soon be indistinguishable from humans.
Basic Coding Tasks: Boilerplate code, simple functions, debugging assistance.
Jobs AI Will Likely Create (Next 10 Years):
AI Trainers/Supervisors: Someone needs to teach AI systems company-specific knowledge and monitor outputs for quality.
AI Integration Specialists: Every business will need people who can connect AI tools to existing workflows.
AI Ethics Officers: Companies will need people to ensure AI is being used responsibly.
Prompt Engineers (evolved): The skill of knowing HOW to communicate with AI to get optimal results will be valuable (though this may become less important as AI gets better at understanding intent).
AI Output Editors: Humans who take AI-generated content and add the creativity, nuance, and brand voice AI can’t replicate.
Synthetic Data Creators: As AI trains on more AI-generated content, we’ll need humans creating high-quality training data.
AI Security Specialists: New attack vectors, new defense strategies, new job category.
Human Experience Designers: As AI automates more, the HUMAN touchpoints become premium experiences worth paying for.
AI Workflow Architects: Designing end-to-end business processes that combine human and AI work optimally.
AI Managers: Like having an IT person, but for your personal AI ecosystem.
AI Compliance Auditors: Ensuring companies are following AI regulations (which are coming).
New Industries AI Will Create:
Personalized Everything: When AI can customize products/services to each individual at scale, personalization becomes an industry.
Synthetic Media Production: AI-generated movies, music, art, games at a fraction of current costs. Tell your phone what you want an app to do and it will appear.
AI-Human Collaboration Tools: Entire platforms built around humans working WITH AI, not being replaced by it.
Micro-Manufacturing: AI + robotics could enable local, on-demand manufacturing of custom goods.
Knowledge Curation: As AI generates infinite content, human curators who can filter signal from noise become MORE valuable.
Experience Economy (Expanded): As AI makes STUFF cheap, human experiences become the luxury. Think artisan, handmade, human-taught, in-person.
Digital Coaching/Mentoring: AI can teach facts, but humans will still pay for mentorship, accountability, and emotional support.
AI-Augmented Healthcare: New diagnostic tools, personalized medicine, AI-assisted surgery creating entire new categories. Human enhancement industries ranging from AI-powered prosthetics to brain-computer interfaces to AI-designed genetic therapies.
Autonomous Infrastructure: Self-driving vehicles create new industries in fleet management, remote monitoring, infrastructure design. Finally, are we going to get hoverboards and flying cars?
How AI Will Upgrade Civilization:
Healthcare: Earlier disease detection, personalized treatment, drug discovery acceleration, medical care available to billions who don't have access now. Human augmentation becomes mainstream—AI-powered prosthetics that restore full function, brain-computer interfaces helping paralyzed people walk, longevity treatments extending healthy lifespan, cognitive enhancement tools making everyone smarter.
Education: Personalized learning at scale, 24/7 tutoring, education available to every human on Earth regardless of location or wealth.
Scientific Discovery: AI can process research at inhuman speeds, finding patterns humans would never see. Expect breakthroughs in materials, medicine, energy, everything. Fix global warming? Hopefully.
Creativity Explosion: When creation becomes cheap, MORE creation happens. Everyone becomes a creator. The amount of art, music, stories, and games will explode. The genius musician who can't play an instrument can finally get the music out of their head. The storyteller who can't write can create their novel. The filmmaker with no camera can make their movie.
Productivity Boom: Knowledge workers become 10x more productive. Small teams can do what previously required companies of hundreds.
Global Access: Services that were only available to the wealthy (legal advice, financial planning, tutoring, therapy) become accessible to everyone through AI.
Problem-Solving Acceleration: Climate change, disease, poverty—AI lets us tackle these at computational speeds instead of human thinking speeds.
The Bottom Line
Will AI take jobs? Yes. Absolutely. Millions of them.
Will it create new jobs? Yes. Absolutely. Millions of them.
Will it upgrade civilization? Yes. Every technology that killed jobs did this.
Will the transition be painful? Yes. It always is.
Should you panic? No. But you should prepare.
What You Should Actually Do About It
Here’s the practical advice:
For Business Owners:
Start using AI NOW - Don’t wait for perfection. Your competition isn’t waiting. Want help identifying where AI can save you 10+ hours a week? Contact me.
Invest in training - Your people need to learn to work WITH AI, not be replaced by it. Again, I can professionally train you or your team.
Look for AI + Human opportunities - The best outcomes combine both.
Don’t fire everyone immediately - Companies that keep humans in the loop while using AI will outcompete pure-AI operations.
For Employees:
Learn to use AI tools - The people who lose jobs aren’t the ones AI replaces, it’s the ones who refuse to use AI. If your reading this newsletter, you’re already on the right path.
Focus on uniquely human skills - Creativity, emotional intelligence, complex judgment, relationship building. These are AI’s weak spots.
Become the editor, not the creator - AI can generate first drafts of almost anything. Humans who can refine, improve, and add nuance will be valuable.
Think bigger - AI as a tool makes individuals more powerful. What could YOU build if you had AI assistance?
For Everyone:
Study history - We’ve been through this before. It’s scary, but we always end up better off.
Stay flexible - The job you have in 10 years might not exist yet.
Bet on humans - Every time we think machines will replace us, we find new things only humans can do.
The Final Word
In 1811, textile workers were so convinced that mechanical looms would destroy civilization that they violently smashed the machines.
Today, we have so much clothing that Americans throw away 81 pounds of clothes per person per year. The average person owns 10x more clothing than people did 200 years ago.
The Luddites were right that their specific jobs would disappear. They were catastrophically wrong about everything else.
Will AI take your job? Maybe. Probably. Eventually.
Will that be the end of work? No. Not even close.
History has run this experiment a dozen times. The result is always the same: Short-term pain, long-term gain. Jobs disappear, new jobs emerge, civilization upgrades.
The pessimists are always wrong. The optimists are always right.
The question isn’t whether AI will take jobs. The question is: What amazing new jobs and industries will we create that we can’t even imagine yet?
If history is any guide, they’re going to be pretty damn cool. Hoverboard please!
Next issue: Vibe Coding 101—I'll show you how to build real stuff with AI even if you can't code. Websites? Easy. Apps? Totally possible. A full SaaS business? Let's find out together.
Stay smart,
Scott
P.S. If you’re still worried about AI taking your job, remember this: In 1900, 41% of Americans worked in agriculture. Today it’s 1.3%. Did we have 40% unemployment? No. We invented entirely new categories of jobs that feed, clothe, entertain, and employ billions of people. We’ll do it again.
P.P.S. If someone forwarded this to you and you want daily AI insights that aren’t panic-inducing, subscribe at SmartOwner.ai