For sixty years, the knowledge economy was supposed to be the safe harbor from automation. Get educated, become a consultant or analyst, and you'd be protected. That deal held until November 2022. This episode traces three eras of labor history—the Industrial Era, the Knowledge Economy Era, and what's happening now—to understand why knowledge workers thought they were untouchable, and why current AI systems are proving that assumption catastrophically wrong. We explore four different "birth dates" of the knowledge economy, the productivity paradoxes that shaped each era, and what the data actually says about displacement at scale.
Episode #526524 — open it directly at myweirdprompts.com/526524