A lot of people are losing their shit over AI making its way up to eliminate a large number of job roles filled by humans. The panic seems to be driven by the idea that the world will not need human contributions to the economy at this point.
This is a scenario that is very unlikely due to a bank of reasons. Let me just say that while concerns are valid, a lot of the predictions leave out so many variables that affect how this all turns out.
While some people speculate on a total takeover of all job roles by AI, others perceive that it'd mostly be a replacement of the bottom 20-80% in sectors like translation, design, coding, content, marketing, sales, design, operation, account, and law.
Personally, I cannot pretend to know what sectors AI will eliminate human workers the most and ones it will barely touch but I can say for a surety that it leans heavily on where development companies choose to focus, it's not like AI is developing itself right?
If the replacement will start with laborers in manufacturing companies for instance, then it's crucial that we look at the cost-to-reward ratio of replacing human workers with AI. Will using an AI worker cost less long term? That's the big question because manufacturing is generally a sector with a vast reality of exploitative labor that allows these companies to save a bank paying people pennies to work.
Would replacing that with AI cost even less or it would be a case of rising cost? This is how I believe most institutions will approach the use of AI workers.
The destruction of jobs will create new jobs and more value
Humans are the backbones of the world's economy, if that is threatened then the economy is threatened and if the economy is threatened, then the existence of AI is threatened. This is something most don't consider when making predictions about the future and how AI will make everyone unemployed.
If everybody became unemployed, what really would be the value of anything?
If people cannot afford to buy anything, what would be the point of AI workers creating or producing them?
For an economy to exists, it isn't just production that has to happen, consumption has to happen as well so unless one is suggesting that everything except the production of energy(power) will be sidelined in the age of economies backed by AI then it makes no sense to expect that the vast population of the world, more than where we are at today, will be unemployed.
The fun fact about what is said above is that even such a scenario would not be profitable for any of these AI companies. In a way, power is already cheap considering what value comes from it, now imagine that every AI workers engaged in the production of just and only more power, that would just make it even cheaper and if every one of them is doing this, there wouldn't be any need for anyone to purchase from another and if there's no buying and selling of anything at all, then the world collapses into chaos.
The vast population being unemployed would lead to destruction, forced entry to rob, kill and a whole lot of chaos. It's frankly just an ugly scenario to think about.
As such, this is far from what would likely happen because companies will be cautious of these potential outcomes.
Certainly, temporarily, a lot of people will lose their jobs to AI but it will be a short-term event as AI will be forced to create more jobs in the process to balance out.
Just as manually operated machines were designed to ease labor, AI is also designed to ease labor and will be focused on replacing humans in job roles that are energy-intensive and generally high-cost. That said, for the economy to thrive, it will have to create new job roles for humans.
In the long-term however, almost everything is likely to be run by smart machines but I imagine that this is a point where individuals each own AI workers, probably loads of them. So it would not be a case of people being out of work, but a case of replacing themselves with AI workers that they still have to maintain.
This paints a better outcome for the race of AI to scale labor because oif individuals own AI workers that engage in various activities that generate value that can be traded, then a system emerges where AI and humans are dependent on each other and buying and selling remains central to how value changes hands and adds to the economies of the world in the process.
The advancements of AI and destruction of jobs isn't going to be as bad as people think, specifically when looking at the long-term value it brings to the job market. The pain that will be felt will be temporary as further down the lines, opportunities will open up for both AI and humans to converge and grow.