Is AI Kiling Jobs?

Harken back to a post I wrote a few months ago titled Is SaaS Eating AI?, Tomasz Tunguz nails it again in his analysis of the likely impact of AI on jobs - especially tech sector jobs.

TL;DR the sky isn't falling (I'm pretty sure...).

Here's the crux of the analysis - In 1909 there were 253 auto manufacturers. Then Henry Ford introduced the assembly line, and 20 years later only 44 manufacturers remained. But jobs in the industry over that same period went from 76K to 471K.  That's over 6X (??) increase of jobs in the sector. 

What happened? Automation fundamentally changed throughput, supply chain and unit economics. The industry not only shifted to feed the new beast, but jobs in it grew by 6X+ over the same time.  Jobs didn't go away - they shape shifted & multiplied.

Feels familiar. Secondary & tertiary effects of industrialized AI are just barely beginning to emerge. But they will. And they'll likely follow the same pattern that followed the assembly line.  As factory automation drastically reduced both the production time and cost of cars, AI will do the same for technology (coding, devops, etc.).  But the resources that would have otherwise been operating in pre-AI type roles will redeploy to  build and build the ecosystems & supply chains necessary to support the post-AI dynamics of building and operating technology.

I'm old enough to remember the cries that the cloud was going to destroy the enterprise hardware business. Nvidia would like a word. 

From Tomasz' original post here - https://www.linkedin.com/posts/tomasztunguz_in-1908-253-american-automobile-manufacturers-ugcPost-7421658103433211904-O1cp/