A senator in the Philippines escaped arrest because his colleagues wouldn't hand him over to the International Criminal Court. This kind of brinkmanship—who holds the power, who gets to decide—is the real game playing out in the AI job market.
There's a widespread assumption that AI will lead to massive, sustained job losses. News outlets are already running headlines about AI "taking" jobs, and the anxiety is palpable. But a closer look reveals a more nuanced picture. The "China shock" analogy suggests that while automation does displace workers in specific roles, it also creates new opportunities as companies adapt.
The real question isn’t about net job losses, but displacement and reskilling. Will the new AI-related roles offset the initial displacement quickly enough to avoid mass unemployment and social unrest? The Adani Group just announced plans to create 120,000 jobs in India by 2030, which shows that one company is going to create jobs and have a significant impact. The bottleneck isn't necessarily technological—we're making rapid progress training LLMs, even in languages like Portuguese (AMÁLIA) and Swift. The real constraint may be how quickly workers can adapt and acquire the new skills required.
The risk of a novel Hantavirus variant emerging and collapsing global trade—a true black swan event—would change the game. But absent that kind of external shock, the AI revolution might surprise by creating more jobs than it destroys. The market hasn't priced this possibility in. My bet is that the narrative shifts from AI-driven job apocalypse to a "re-skilling paradox," where retraining efforts struggle to keep pace with the rapidly evolving demands of the AI-augmented economy. It’s like a treadmill that keeps speeding up.
Will governments and educational institutions be able to keep up?
PREDICTION: The narrative around AI and job losses will shift to focus on the challenges of reskilling, rather than net job losses.