This was an exceptional post, thank you. To return to the proverbial Gramsci-attributed quote folks often cite nowadays, “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born.”

AI might cause the messy middle Reality 2, which would be a political and economic shock. Yet in the meantime, the legal profession has posted something like 1.5 yrs of uninterrupted job gains, while software engineering job postings reached their highest levels in 3 years.

What happens to employment levels in the next several years will largely depend on how capable AI is at automating the many tasks that make up each type of role, as well as whether it creates new valuable tasks. More sweeping statements that AI automates cognition or all of knowledge work glosses over the fact that even knowledge roles are complex bundles of tasks — some of which AI might easily perform, others less so.

But what happens to wages is, I think, the biggest risk of all — and far less discussed compared to AI’s impact on unemployment.