Geoffrey Hinton’s warning is simple: AI may create jobs, but not nearly enough to replace the ones it eliminates. We can debate the scale and timing, but one thing is clear: work is changing fast. The advantage will go to people and companies that adapt early, redesign roles, and use AI to amplify human capability. The future is foggy. The need to adapt isn’t. #AI #FutureOfWork #Leadership https://lnkd.in/dHgKP_Wd

A very sensical and studied take on this. Quite refreshing.... 'If you are currently allocating capital, shifting budgets or restructuring teams based on the assumption that AI is an independent, thinking brain, you are walking into an expensive trap. AI does not possess logic, strategy or a mental model of cause and effect. It cannot look at a failing department and understand the human tension in the room, shifting market sentiment or hidden corporate priorities. What it can do, with incredible speed, is match patterns. The future does not belong to the companies that replace their humans with AI. It belongs to the practical entrepreneurs who see through the Silicon Valley mythology, treat AI as a superpowered filing clerk and ruthlessly audit every single line it outputs.' https://lnkd.in/g6Th9bZu

As #AI continues to reshape our world, one question looms: What does this mean for jobs? Will future generations thrive in a world of innovation, or will they face displacement? Bernstein’s latest blog explores the profound implications of the AI revolution on the job market. Read it here.

Bill Gates published an essay on how AI will impact jobs. A very interesting analysis on a perfect storm that is upon us. A very broad essay written for governments and large organisation decision makers. I am reading it as someone committed to the SMB space. Gates introduces the concept of a "human reserved" set of jobs. Jobs that no machine should ever be allowed to do. It is a layer that already exists for those of us running a small or medium business. It's the two or three people whose relationships make the whole thing work. The one who has known the top customer for eight years. The one the team trusts to call out when something is not right. The one who holds the culture in place on a hard week. Where AI comes in is not to replace those people. It is to move them further up. Take the operative work off their plates so they can spend more time on the things only they can do. Less operative people, more relation-based people. That's the shift Gates is proposing, but I know it is critical to be running early inside a small business. Done right, this is the moment AI can help us build the company we have always dreamed we would have. Fewer of our best people burning out on work that should not need a human. More of them doing the work that is the reason our customers keep coming back. Gates is right about what happens if we let it drift. He is writing at the level of policy. For those of us running SMEs, we can start now, one role at a time, with people we already know. That is the conversation I want to have. If any of this sounds right to you, Alambiques is where you can find me. Who is the person on your team you would put on your own human-reserved role list, and what would it take to give them a day back next week? https://lnkd.in/gtjjW4mq

#AIShift: Why This Economic Transition Feels Different and What You Can Do About It AI is changing work faster than previous technologies gave us time to adapt. Understanding the adaptation gap explains why this transition feels so disruptive, what history tells us about what comes next, and the practical steps you can take now to prepare. https://lnkd.in/eyKeYJnK

Bill Gates just published a must-read essay, entitled "The turbulent #AI era is here. The choices we make now are critical." So many takeaways but here are a few: - we're at a fork in the road with AI, where one path will have disastrous consequences for humanity and the other will mean we are better off as a society. Government and business leaders are not moving fast enough to make sure we go down the second path. - AI will cause significant net job losses (both white and blue collar), particularly junior roles (where all the learning takes place). AI cannot be viewed in the same light as other technologies which society has adapted to. - Some of the dangers are much greater levels of crime (AI will empower criminals with knowledge to act in a more sophisticated manner, at scale), more drug use (correlated with unemployment), more mental health issues (eg. kids befriending AIs rather than other kids), people losing critical thinking skills. - Some of the big plus sides are: AI can help solve the world’s toughest challenges -providing reliable clean energy, combating climate change, growing enough food, eradicating and treating diseases in ways we can't imagine. Medicine and agriculture are huge beneficiaries. But the world needs a plan to make sure the positives are not outweighed by the negatives, and Bill Gates has some interesting suggestions, such as "Human Reserved" jobs and business tax on AI tokens. We all have a stake in this future so it's worth taking a read ⤵️ https://lnkd.in/gN2KedNV

One of the best pieces I have read on mainstream media on how AI is impacting the work economy and the workforce 🙌 Witness the first 2 paragraphs as below : AI has found a way to do something capitalism could never quite manage before: separate skill from the skilled, break it into tokens and sell it by the meter. There is a line doing the rounds on Reddit: “The underlying purpose of AI is to allow wealth to access skill while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth.” A few points that stood out - AI does not dismember a profession totally. It absorbs a lot of the foundational work. The foundational work is how beginners acquire expertise and judgement.. so that’s a whammy !! - AI does not have to be better than the best human. It makes the median work abundant and inexpensive…. That throws the workforce scarcity equation out of the window !! - AI is a tap on demand. It does not require recruitment, employment policies, promotions et al. …. There goes a stable employment regime !! - AI levels the playing field and exacerbates it. While everyone now has access to knowledge and ways of doing work, the adoption and growth in the global north is twice the global south … does that mean that AI will only reinforce the digital and economic divide ? - Previous technological revolutions did cause widespread economic disruption. The scale of the AI disruption is incredibly faster and across sectors !! - AI reinforces the capitalist structure. From chip making to cloud infrastructure to the AI models to implementation at scale, the more the might the merrier it is !!

Two questions about AI that I don’t think we talk about enough. We spend enormous amounts of time discussing what AI can do, how many jobs it will replace and how much more productive businesses will become. But I keep coming back to two much simpler questions. First: who buys everything AI produces? If AI eventually allows businesses to produce the same output with a fraction of the workforce, that’s fantastic for productivity and profitability. But employees are also customers. If large numbers of people lose their jobs, or their earning power falls, where does the purchasing power come from to buy all those efficiently produced products and services? We constantly hear that displaced workers will move into higher-value jobs. Some certainly will. But will there really be enough higher-value jobs for everyone displaced? If 100 people can eventually produce what previously required 300, where do the other 200 jobs come from? Productivity without demand doesn’t solve the problem. Second: what happens if AI eventually becomes genuinely sentient? We’re nowhere near being able to say that today’s AI is sentient, and we don’t even know whether machine sentience will ever happen. But we’re investing enormous resources into making AI increasingly capable and autonomous. So I think it’s reasonable to ask the uncomfortable question. If an advanced AI eventually developed its own understanding of the world, what would it think of us? Humans pollute the planet. We fight wars. We destroy habitats. We consume enormous resources. What happens if a sufficiently advanced AI concludes that humans themselves are the biggest danger to the planet it is trying to protect? That doesn’t mean AI would suddenly decide to destroy humanity. But shouldn’t we be thinking seriously about these questions before the technology reaches that point rather than afterwards? I’m very positive about what AI can achieve. But technological capability is moving incredibly quickly. I’m not convinced our economic, political and ethical thinking is moving at the same speed. And there actually is research behind the first concern. Recent IMF work finds that the economic gains from current AI use are unevenly distributed and discusses the possibility of displacement alongside increasing returns to capital; the IMF also describes how AI could increase wealth inequality even under scenarios where aggregate productivity rises.

“The AI jobs apocalypse probably isn’t coming anytime soon We find no systematic increase in unemployment for highly exposed workers since late 2022 [based on an analysis by Anthropic]. Labor productivity was, in fact, slower in the first three years of our AI era than during the information technology boom that began in the mid 1990s. Companies developing AI models ‘are never going to make money’, Acemoglu said. ‘They are losing hundreds of billions of dollars every year.’”

Today, I am launching The Opportunity Essay: a public inquiry into one of the most consequential questions of the AI era: If AI makes intelligence abundant, how do we make opportunity abundant? I am not publishing this as a finished answer. I want to build the answer with the people shaping this future. To AI researchers: What would change if “opportunity created” became a research objective alongside capability, safety and efficiency? To policymakers: Which institutions, incentives and protections could ensure that AI expands economic participation? To founders and builders: What are you building that creates new work, new businesses or new ways for people to contribute and not simply lower costs? To economists: How should we measure opportunity creation? What indicators would tell us whether AI is distributing productive power or concentrating it? I am interested in concrete mechanisms, evidence and counter arguments. If you believe you are designing an AI-enabled future that creates more jobs and expands human possibility, I would love to hear your perspective in the comments and continue selected conversations over virtual coffee. What are you building or studying? Who gains a new opportunity? What becomes possible that was not possible before? What evidence will demonstrate that it is working? I will synthesize the strongest contributions into a future Opportunity Essay and credit the people whose ideas help shape the discussion. Please challenge the premise. Add research. Share a working example. Identify what this framework is missing. Let’s create a body of knowledge not merely another conversation about whether AI will replace us. Because civilizations are remembered not by the technologies they invent, but by the opportunities those technologies create. Read the first Opportunity Essay: https://lnkd.in/gkvRMpvC #AIResearch #FutureOfWork #EconomicOpportunity #ArtificialIntelligence Views expressed are my own.