LessWrong (30+ Karma)

“When Will They Take Our Jobs?” by Zvi


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And once they take our jobs, will we be able to find new ones? Will AI take those too?

Seb Krier recently wrote an unusually good take on that, which will center this post.

I believe that Seb is being too optimistic on several fronts, but in a considered and highly reasonable way. The key is to understand the assumptions being made, and also to understand that he is only predicting that the era of employment optimism will last for 10-20 years.

By contrast, there are others that expect human employment and even human labor share of income to remain robust indefinitely, no matter the advances of AI capabilities, even if AI can do a superior job on all tasks, often citing comparative advantage. I will centrally respond to such claims in a different future post.

So to disambiguate, this post is about point #2 here, but I also assert #1 and #3:

  1. By default, if AI capabilities continue to advance, then the humans lose control over the future and are rather likely to all die.
  2. If we manage to avoid that, then there is a good chance humans can retain a [...]
  3. ---

    Outline:

    (01:39) Normality Is Magic

    (03:20) Welcome To The Cyborg Era

    (06:09) The Cyborg Era Will End Within Our Lifetimes

    (07:46) Transitional Unemployment In The Cyborg Era Will Be High

    (08:51) Congratulations, Many Of You Are Literally A Human

    (09:34) You've Got Taste

    (11:33) The Revolution of Rising AI Capabilities

    (11:56) The Revolution of Rising Expectations

    (12:25) Proceed With Caution

    (13:13) The Ostrich Take

    ---

    First published:

    January 14th, 2026

    Source:

    https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/KAjhtrJggPtaophy7/when-will-they-take-our-jobs

    ---

    Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO.

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