Has the Decline of Knowledge Work Begun?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/25/business/economy/white-collar-layoffs.html
The unemployment rate for college graduates has risen faster than for other workers over the past few years. How worried should they be?
A white-collar world without juniors?
https://www.ft.com/content/8e730692-fd9c-45b1-84dc-7ea16429c5c6
Professional business models may need to change if novices lose the opportunities to learn and progress when AI takes over their work
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/03/25/business/economy/white-collar-layoffs.html
The unemployment rate for college graduates has risen faster than for other workers over the past few years. How worried should they be?
A white-collar world without juniors?
https://www.ft.com/content/8e730692-fd9c-45b1-84dc-7ea16429c5c6
Professional business models may need to change if novices lose the opportunities to learn and progress when AI takes over their work
How AI will divide the best from the rest
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/02/13/how-ai-will-divide-the-best-from-the-rest
Optimists hope the technology will be a great equaliser. Instead, it looks likely to widen social divides.
https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2025/02/13/how-ai-will-divide-the-best-from-the-rest
Optimists hope the technology will be a great equaliser. Instead, it looks likely to widen social divides.
My take from Feb 2025:
https://thehill.com/opinion/5151848-generative-ai-economic-concerns/
Looking ahead, the rise of generative artificial intelligence poses a much bigger challenge for policymakers. Generative AI appears to truly upend prior assumptions regarding the stability of high-skill positions as it can easily and rapidly perform many cognitive and non-routine tasks. Suddenly, white-collar jobs appear vulnerable. Entry-level positions in information technology, law, finance, accounting, marketing and other professional services are already experiencing cutbacks.
Ever since the Luddites smashed textile machinery in early 19th-century England, concerns surrounding technological unemployment have resurfaced with each new wave of disruptive innovation. Technophobes often fall prey to the “lump of labor” fallacy. Thus far, such concerns have proven to be largely unfounded. Neo-luddites often failed to recognize the fact that while new technologies may act as a substitute for certain types of human labor, they also augment the skillset of many workers in ways that enable the creation of new products and services or even entire new industries (which in turn generate vast new array of jobs).
Until now, while some sectors and professions inevitably faced obsolescence (and some workers suffered from labor market displacements) due to technological shifts, there were usually net job gains associated with tech innovations. However, given the nature and scope of generative AI, it is not unreasonable to wonder if this time might indeed be different. While some profess optimism about AI’s potential to help the middle-class, many fear that AI will do to white-collar jobs what automation/globalization did to blue-collar ones.
Related:
Humans are being tricked into engineering their own demise
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/03/24/britain-blind-trust-chatbots-plays-into-russia-hands/
By rushing out artificial intelligence, we are making ourselves more vulnerable than ever.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2025/03/24/britain-blind-trust-chatbots-plays-into-russia-hands/
By rushing out artificial intelligence, we are making ourselves more vulnerable than ever.