If AI sends us home, I still see the glass half full

In the coming years the job market could change much faster than we imagine.

That’s not me talking—it’s experts in the AI world.

Elon Musk is among the most extreme in his forecasts, but he certainly isn’t the only one.

Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, has talked about the possible disappearance of 50% of entry-level white-collar jobs in the next few years.

Geoffrey Hinton, one of the fathers of deep learning, has even provocatively suggested that young people learn to become plumbers.

Reinvention?

So: is it possible that within a few years many of us who work in digital will have to reinvent ourselves?

There’s some probability of that.

And so we might become excellent candidates to go back to much more physical work.

Besides, that’s exactly where there’s a huge shortage of people today: construction, technical maintenance, plumbers, electricians, installers… you name it.

I’d gladly do it.

And I say that even though I’m in a situation where, if I wanted, I could also decide to retire and live off what I’ve built over the years.

But honestly I don’t think that suits me.

I’d rather roll up my sleeves, learn something new and keep doing.

Boring businesses (and property)

Or, why not, acquire one of those famous boring businesses and try to run it well, using exactly the digital and AI tools we’ve learned to use in recent years.

In fact, thinking about it, having built a fairly broad real-estate portfolio over more than a decade, I’d already have plenty of work to do.

All activities I currently outsource simply for convenience and to optimise my time.

Tomorrow?

It might even make sense to build a services company around that and expand it to third parties.

Glass half full

In both cases I can always roll up my sleeves.

And maybe finally avoid having to take 10,000+ steps every day and go to the gym to compensate for a life spent in front of a computer.

So if AI really were to send us all home…

I still see the glass half full.