Viewing AI job replacement through the lens of the two industrial revolutions

In fact, technological upgrades are the main reason for labor progress. For example, the first industrial revolution was the era of the steam engine, which was truly a time of large-scale technological replacement. Many jobs that originally relied on manual and physical labor were quickly replaced by machines, leading to noticeable short-term unemployment and income pressure; life was indeed quite difficult, and this is very normal.

However, the ultimate outcome was not that machines replaced people, which resulted in mass unemployment; on the contrary, because machines replaced human labor, production costs decreased, which was inevitable. With lower costs, the prices of goods fell, the market scale expanded, demand was released, and new jobs began to emerge. In other words, technological replacement did not simply lead to unemployment but rather to a reallocation of labor from old industries to new industries.

For those who became unemployed, it was indeed challenging in the short term. To make a living, they had to find industries that machines could not completely replace or seek positions in new industrial chains. For instance, after the widespread application of the steam engine, many workers transitioned into service industries or commerce, and even former coachmen became “drivers” in new industries that emerged with the upgrading of transportation systems. This essentially reflects the changes brought about by industrial upgrades; it's not that jobs disappeared, but rather that the structure of jobs changed.

The second industrial revolution was similar; electrification, assembly lines, and automation further enhanced production efficiency and continued to compress a large number of inefficient positions, but at the same time created more new occupations around the industrial system, such as equipment maintenance, transportation, sales, management, finance, retail, and urban services, resulting in a shift in the entire employment structure of society. Before the second industrial revolution, there were no programmers; such positions only emerged because of the electrical revolution. Thus, in the short term, jobs disappeared, while in the long term, jobs were reorganized.

So, applying this logic to AI, my view has always been that the rise of AI does not necessarily mean that the unemployment rate will significantly increase, nor does it mean that workers will lose their sources of income on a large scale. The greater probability is that labor will be reallocated, and wages can still be earned; it’s just that the ways of earning and the required skills will evolve.

AI will replace a portion of standardized and repetitive cognitive labor but will also create a large number of new demands and positions, such as prompt engineering, demand design, workflow arrangement, results verification, data governance, compliance, industry knowledge modeling, AI tool usage training, and new collaborative roles where humans are responsible for structure and AI is responsible for execution.

In plain terms, AI is more about shifting many people's work from pure execution to structural design. This will eliminate some old skills but will not completely push "humans" out of the labor market.

For example, the revolution brought by AI may threaten the jobs of programmers, designers, and artists, but these workers can also transition into roles such as architects, model trainers and applicators, process designers, and AI collaborative managers. Although AI will replace some jobs, the ones giving commands to AI, breaking down demands, setting constraints, conducting acceptance tests, and assuming responsibility will still ultimately be humans. Positions that did not exist before will increasingly emerge due to the widespread use of AI, and the demand will become clearer.

If AI represents the third industrial revolution, then the ultimate results will not differ greatly from the first two. There will certainly be more advanced productive forces, continued decreases in unit costs, overall enhancements in social efficiency, and products and services becoming cheaper and more widespread, while also undergoing a new round of shifts in employment structure.

In the short term, there may be an increase in unemployment rates, some industries may be impacted, and certain skills may rapidly depreciate, but in the long run, it is often not "humans" that are eliminated, but rather old working methods.

Therefore, I do not believe that the rise of AI will necessarily push the unemployment rate to uncontrollable levels; at least, it cannot simply be assumed that job replacement will directly lead to a collapse in demand. It is indeed possible that some people may be eliminated, some will be forced to upgrade, and some will earn higher incomes because they learned to collaborate with AI earlier. The total structure of jobs in society will change, but that does not mean that society no longer needs workers.

What is truly worrisome is not AI itself but rather individuals refusing to upgrade their skills in the age of AI. Because every industrial revolution has proven that technological advancement does not wait for anyone but rewards those willing to adapt to change. For instance, friends who recently began studying lobsters are surely the first to reap the benefits. At least they are winning in terms of traffic. There are even tutorials on buying lobsters showing up on Xiaohongshu.

@bitget VIP, lower rates, better benefits

免责声明：本文章仅代表作者个人观点，不代表本平台的立场和观点。本文章仅供信息分享，不构成对任何人的任何投资建议。用户与作者之间的任何争议，与本平台无关。如网页中刊载的文章或图片涉及侵权，请提供相关的权利证明和身份证明发送邮件到support@aicoin.com，本平台相关工作人员将会进行核查。