Recently, I've been seeing a lot of discussions about AI taking away jobs, but a16z's partner completely denies this "apocalyptic" view in a lengthy article. After reading it, I found it to be a very convincing exchange of ideas, so I summarized the key points.

The fundamental idea is that the assumption that "the total amount of work to be done worldwide is fixed" is incorrect. Looking at history, even when new technologies replace old jobs, more new jobs are created beyond that. Examples include mechanization of agriculture, electrification, spreadsheet software—each of these.

Taking agriculture as an example, in the early 20th century, about one-third of the American workforce was engaged in farming. But by 2017, that number had fallen to 2%. At first glance, it might seem like unemployment would increase, but in reality, agricultural output tripled, and those workers flowed into factories, stores, offices, hospitals, research labs, and eventually into service industries and software sectors. In other words, a new economic system was born.

The same applies to the era of electrification. In the early 20th century, only 5% of American factories used electricity, but by 1930, 80% were powered by electricity. Over the following decades, labor productivity doubled. But this did not lead to increased unemployment; instead, employment in manufacturing, sales, credit, and other new fields exploded.

An interesting case is the story of bookkeepers when VisiCalc and Excel appeared. In other words, these tools were supposed to end bookkeeping jobs. But in reality, while about 1 million bookkeepers decreased, approximately 1.5 million financial analysts increased. Higher productivity leads to the creation of new jobs.

The hiring of software engineers and product managers is also rapidly increasing. If AI were to fully replace human thinking, such phenomena wouldn't occur. But in fact, demand for both types of talent continues to recover.

Current data also do not support the apocalyptic claims. Multiple academic studies show that AI adoption has not significantly changed overall employment numbers. Instead, routine clerical tasks are more easily replaced, while analytical, technical, and managerial work tend to be enhanced by AI.

One survey estimates that over 90% of companies saw no impact from AI in the past three years. Among companies using AI, only 5% reported effects on their workforce, with roughly equal numbers seeing increases and decreases.

On a macro level, there is still no statistically significant correlation between AI and unemployment or employment growth rates. Conversely, the number of new app store registrations has increased by 60% year-over-year, indicating a boom in new businesses. Robotics and automation are also attracting attention, with AI giving rise to entirely new industries.

The key point is that while AI will certainly eliminate some jobs, it doesn't mean everything is over. Human ambition is endless; when shortages are alleviated, people aim for higher levels of development. When food prices fall, spending increases on housing, healthcare, education, travel, and entertainment. The labor market moves according to the same logic.

Knowledge work is not ending; it’s actually just beginning. Automation eliminates repetitive tasks, raising human work to higher levels. As new jobs constantly emerge and conquer new frontiers, new frontiers will appear again.

AI may indeed reduce some roles (like customer service reps or medical clerks), but from an overall economic perspective, we are not entering an era of unemployment. Instead, we have more affordable AI, larger markets, new companies, new industries, and more advanced human work ahead. There is no fixed value for job quantity or cognitive capacity. AI is not the end of work but the dawn of a richer era of intelligence.