What if this year’s $600B investment in AI infrastructure isn’t a bubble? What if it pays off because it works so damn well? Will we enter a period of economic and workforce upheaval unlike anything we’ve experienced?
I’m excited about the monthly improvements to AI models and tools that are helping us do amazing things and get actual work done.
I’m already seeing where the next wave of AI impact is going, which is where hundreds of software founders and investors I know are headed–as fast as they can get there.
Here’s what I see coming if AI really works really well.
1) Almost all jobs will change and be transformed in the next 10 years. Try to think of a job that won’t have massive AI or robotic assistance, or be done completely by AI.
This sounds exciting to investors betting on massive economic and social disruption, but it will be a crazy and difficult ride for everyone else who needs to completely change their skills and mindset to remain relevant in the new world.
We’ve done these revolutions before, but never at this pace. It’s gonna hurt.
2) Millions of entry-level “knowledge worker” jobs will go away in 2-4 years (tens of millions?). If we finally get to robotic driving, manufacturing, and healthcare, these numbers will be even bigger. Millions of jobs that people used to do and were trained for are gone.
In the next few years, trillions of dollars of investment and funding will be going into AI. To pay that back with a great return, that’s more than just replacing other tools in existing IT and software budgets. It’s going after headcount spending. AI doing more work, much better and much cheaper than people.
3) This won’t happen in a century or a generation, as it did to our ancestors and us. It will happen in 10 years. We can already see it moving fast now.
The scale of this change will be larger than that of previous revolutions, and it will come faster if investment and tech trends continue at this accelerating pace.
The smartest AI experts I know are excited about this technology, but they also say that the social disruption will be massive.
Maybe the whole “AI Investment Bubble” and “Social Disruption Revolution” is just about how fast it gets here.
We survived the steady rise of ecommerce without killing retail (or our society) over 30 years. Jeff Bezos at Amazon bet big ahead of everyone else, and he won.
What happens if most industries change more than this, but in the next 10 years?
It’s going to be a wild ride, and there will be new winners and new casualties.
I don’t know how to stop this AI train that’s getting faster and smarter by the month.
And nobody seems to know how to manage the risks and the disruptions. Or the accelerating and unpredictable change.
Get ready. It’s going to be a wild ride.
