I’ve been thinking a lot about the jobs question lately. Not the abstract, academic version — the real one. The one where actual industries are already shifting under our feet and people are trying to figure out what’s next.
The Short-Term Pain Nobody Wants to Talk About
Here’s where I land on this, and I know it’s not the popular optimist take: while I can agree with the long-term result — less work, more production, new kinds of jobs — I don’t agree that the short term is going to be smooth.
With AI entertainment on demand, I see Hollywood and its industry contracting pretty significantly. With lawyers and bankers being supplemented (and in some cases replaced) by more capable logic resources that have perfect command of facts, data, and the math that makes a deal work, I see further erosion of high-paying professional industries. Accountants are already feeling it. These aren’t hypothetical disruptions — they’re happening NOW.
And here’s the thing people miss: this isn’t the first time we’ve seen this movie. AI is the next level of what globalization did to factory workers in developed nations. Companies exercised their fiduciary responsibilities, moved operations offshore, and left people without jobs and — more importantly — without purpose. The displacement playbook is the same. The speed is just faster.
The Accountant Problem Is a Pretty Good Case Study
Look at accounting. The numbers tell a real story. Accounting programs have seen major enrollment declines — somewhere between 20% and 40% over the past few years. TurboTax already handles about 58% of tax filings. So yes, TurboTax IS killing accountants, slowly but surely.
But here’s where it gets interesting. The number of solopreneurs in America has gone from 19 million to 43 million, even as the number of accountants has decreased. Most people starting a business want a wall between them and the IRS — they don’t want to be personally liable for accounting mistakes. And TurboTax doesn’t negate that liability.
So we’ve got MORE people who need accounting help and FEWER accountants to provide it. That’s exactly the kind of gap AI steps into. But are you really ready to trust an AI accountant? I think for straightforward W-2 filings, absolutely. For complicated taxes with K-1s and multiple entities? I’m not so sure anyone’s ready to just GPT their way through that and expect a perfect situation. Not yet.
The real question isn’t whether AI CAN do the work. It’s whether we trust it enough to let it, and what happens to the liability chain when it gets something wrong.
Cost Cutting First, Revenue Generation Second
I’ve been wondering about something. AI seems to be contributing first to cost cutting, and only later to revenue generation. Maybe the market is waiting for that second phase — the revenue generation piece — before it gets really excited.
Think about it. Every company deploying AI right now is doing it to reduce headcount or speed up existing processes. That’s cost cutting. The revenue generation side — entirely new products, new markets, new capabilities that didn’t exist before — that’s still emerging. And it’s the part that actually creates new jobs.
The CTO consensus I’m hearing is that jobs likely won’t get drastically reduced at all — just that our work is going to get a LOT more productive. I think that’s right for knowledge workers who adapt. I think it’s dangerously optimistic for everyone else.
UBI Is Not the Answer
I’ll just say it: UBI is 100% not the answer.
Who’s paying for it? The companies that displaced the workers? Good luck with that legislation. Is there training for new jobs when AI displaces segments of an industry? Will AI allow for upskilling at a pace that keeps up with the displacement?
These aren’t rhetorical questions. They’re the actual policy questions nobody has good answers for yet. And if we get this wrong, we don’t end up in some utopian post-work society — we end up with a LOT of people without purpose, which historically doesn’t go well for anyone.
What I Actually Think Happens
Work transforms. I think we move to less than five days a week for the average employee as productivity is exponentially enhanced. A lot of jobs being replaced are jobs people don’t want to do anymore — the next generation doesn’t want to prepare taxes, do data entry, or grind through document review.
But the transition matters. The SPEED of the transition matters. And right now, I think we’re underestimating how fast AI moves from “automating the stuff nobody wants to do” to “automating the stuff highly paid professionals get paid very well to do.”
The path forward isn’t panic, and it isn’t blind optimism. It’s being honest that this is a massive structural shift that needs to be integrated with thought — not just celebrated as inevitable progress. If we don’t think carefully about how this rolls out, we won’t end up in some AI paradise. We’ll end up with the same globalization story, just faster and broader.
The people who’ll do best? The ones building with AI right now, not waiting for it to come for their industry. That’s not just advice — it’s pretty much the only playbook that’s ever worked when a technology this transformative shows up.
