Note to the mods. The following cut and paste comes from a financial newsletter I subscribe to so there is no functional link to post. The man being quoted is the CEO of Amazon.
“As we roll out more Generative AI and agents, it should change the way our work is done,” Jassy wrote. “We will need fewer people doing some of the jobs that are being done today, and more people doing other types of jobs. It’s hard to know exactly where this nets out over time, but in the next few years, we expect that this will reduce our total corporate workforce as we get efficiency gains from using AI extensively across the company.”
While this is just one CEO’s prediction, we have no doubt that management teams across the world are looking into how they can leverage this new technology to achieve a leaner workforce. This is something that, as investors, we need to watch closely in the coming months, quarters and years.
I'm sure it comes as no surprise the job market will be impacted by AI, it has been long predicted. Some very high profile folks like former best bud, now sworn enemy of Don, Elon Musk has warned of the dangers. Many of the developing world's countries have a burgeoning middle class based on the shift of manufacturing jobs to countries with cheap labor. The potential for unrest should folks lose their jobs to AI enabled automation is daunting. Automation and robotics both will cause displaced workers (unemployment) in nations like the US as well. All of which poses a danger to virtually every nation's workforce and thus global stability.
These risks are part of the reason there has been some discussion of a universal basic income to keep those affected from falling in to poverty. Mass unemployment having a number of ramifications for the breakdown of civil society.
Mankind will need to plan for the inevitable. We'll need serious people to do so. Not people with the mentality of a twelve year old using social media posts to making all caps threats against the leader of a country involved in a regional conflict.