AI Was Supposed to Take Your Job. Why Hasn't It?
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Every time a disruptive technology arrives, the prediction is exactly the same: mass unemployment. ATMs were supposed to eliminate bank tellers. Spreadsheets were supposed to wipe out accountants. History tells a completely different, and terrifyingly counterintuitive, story.
Out of every job title tracked by the U.S. Census over the past 60 years, exactly one has been fully eliminated by automation.
In this episode, we break down the history of automation, from the birth of the ATM to the strange paradox of the airline pilot, to find out what it tells us about our future with AI. Are tools like Claude and ChatGPT coming for your paycheck? The answer depends entirely on which side of history you fall on.
What's inside...
► The 40-Year Paradox: Why more automation actually doubled the number of workers in traditional roles.
► Elevators vs. Airplanes: The single job automation fully killed, and the one it supercharged.
► The Job Iceberg: How "competing against non-consumption" unlocks massive industries that don't even exist yet.
► MIT Data Discovered: David Autor's research revealing where 60% of today's jobs actually come from.
► Why We Work: What decades of lottery surveys and Maslow's hierarchy teach us about human labor.
Chapters:
01:07 What People Want
03:45 What Is a Job Exactly?
07:48 Elevators vs Airplanes
12:28 Why You Don't Own a 3D Printer
14:35 60% of Jobs Did Not Exist 50 Years Ago
16:52 Footnotes
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Producer: Phil Andrews (the guy in the videos and the comments)
Video Editor: Christie Muldoon
Motion Graphics: Seth Laupus & Xingpei Shen
Director of Production Services: Sam Wolf
Thumbnail: Tom Grillo
Franchise Content Producer: Tariq Abdellatif
President, Morning Brew: Devin Emery
Papers Cited
David Autor, Caroline Chin, Anna Salomons, Bryan Seegmiller, New Frontiers: The Origins and Content of New Work, 1940–2018, The Quarterly Journal of Economics, Volume 139, Issue 3, August 2024, Pages 1399–1465, https://doi.org/10.1093/qje/qjae008
James Bessen, How Computer Automation Affects Occupations: Technology, Jobs, and Skills , No. 15-49 Boston University School of Law, Law and Economics Research Paper (2016).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/facult...