AI and the Future of Work

Introduction

For the past few weeks I have been spending a lot of time thinking about the effect that AI will have on the job market. Rather than trying to guess what will happen in the short term and the next one to two years I think it is far more important to zoom out towards the next 10-20 years as job markets don't change overnight and trends take time to become established before playing out over a longer time period. The 10-20 year timeframe is going to be highly consequential for anyone under 40 and especially so for anyone who has yet to begin their career.

There’s a common and widely held view that AI will replace a significant number of jobs in the coming years, raising concerns about mass unemployment and social impacts. This is a completely valid and understandable concern as a large part of the population being without a job and income is never good. Cost savings and efficiencies that businesses may find could be more than offset by negative societal impacts. However I hold a much more positive view and I believe that any job losses may be more than offset by a new wave of economic activity, creativity and job creation leading to jobs that we are unaware of today which people will be doing in the next 10 years onwards.

The Internet Parallel

For example take the early days of the dotcom era when people were first starting to use computers, the advancement of the internet provided opportunities for new industries to appear and many new jobs to be created. Here are a few examples that mostly didn’t exist 10-20 years ago:

Web developer, UX/UI designer, cloud engineer, cybersecurity analyst, data scientist, blockchain developer, AI prompt engineer, digital marketer, SEO specialist, social media manager, content creator/influencer, e-commerce manager, affiliate marketer, e-commerce entrepreneur, product listing specialist, online customer support, delivery platform worker (Uber Eats, Deliveroo), freelance designer/developer, YouTuber/streamer, video editor, podcast producer, social media strategist, digital journalist, remote project manager, virtual assistant, online HR/recruiter, customer success manager, fintech product manager, data analyst (financial tech), crypto trader/analyst, risk and compliance officer (digital finance), online tutor/instructor, course designer, EdTech developer, learning experience designer, AI product designer, virtual world architect, NFT community manager.

There’s no doubt that the internet replaced certain jobs the net amount of jobs created due to the internet is still higher than pre internet. As well as this the global reach of the internet made employment opportunities more mobile in certain roles like coding, design, customer support etc.

The Buildout Phase

In the early days of the internet people had a limited understanding of the effect it would have on jobs and new industries created and viewed is as a more simple communication tool. However fast forward a few years after the dot com crash we started to see the development of these new industries when social media companies, smartphones and apps, cloud computing, remote work as well as others all started to gain traction. In some way a large aspect of this delay was likely caused by the cultural adaption that needed to take place. The internet felt like a revolution at the beginning, especially in the early phase of peak hype, but it took longer to play out than first thought and became more of an evolution. When the internet was getting started, a lot of capital needed to be invested the build the critical infrastructure. A great deal of money was spent on fiber optic cables, routers and broadband build out to support the development of websites and the shift to online business. Today we’re at a similarly early phase where huge capital investments are being made in advance but the meaningful business changes are still in the future. We are currently as of November 2025, still in the phase of building out critical infrastructure which includes data centers, LLM’s, chips, power generation and upgrading the electrical grid. This has already been estimated to be the largest capital investment in world history. Already it far exceeds the internet, the build out of the US interstate highway system and even the railway boom of the 1800’s and it is this investment that will provide the base for future jobs, businesses and ventures.

Historical Comparison

I like to think back all the way to the renaissance period in Europe and compare the jobs created back then to the jobs created int he future with AI. The basis was that there was wealth created by trade, banking and commerce which allowed individuals to focus on more creative professions such as artists, architects, scientists, thinkers, merchants and scholars. These were previously not recognized professions however due to advancements in technology such as the printing press writing and spread of new ideas were created. This brought an intellectual shift which led to the spread of humanism which emphasized reason, observation and human potential. This again is a parallel I see AI following.

Creativity and the Future Job Market

I believe that one of the most important skills in the future job market will be creativity and employers will attached very high value to this. Today AI models are capable of reading reports and filings, assisting with coding and over time AI will remove the need for a whole host of what are currently tedious and time consuming manual tasks. AI is already extremely capable at doing many of these tasks and will only get better and better. However, one constraint that is already creating a bottleneck for AI adoption at an enterprise level is data. There’s a huge difference between data that is available on the internet for LLM’s to use and critical business data that is held within the firewall of an enterprise. This is why I am optimistic that AI will be a tool that allows others to be creative and will assist in the more manual tasks while humans still control the core ideas. I believe that the concerns about job losses are overdone and rather than replace humans, AI will augment humans in many jobs and remove some of the most arduous tasks that don’t add value. In addition, jobs will be created that no one has yet imagined.

Lowering Barriers to Creation

One of the biggest edges AI has over the internet is it democratizes information in a way that ordinary non-technical individuals will now be able to use their creativity and ideas to build things that they were unable to build before due to their lack of technical skills. For example this new website that I have created was built entirely by myself with the assistance of AI specifically ChatGPT and used Next.JS and Vercel for the platform. Without the use of AI this is something that I would be unable to build before and would have had to rely on a company or individual to build it for me. Many future projects will have a far lower barrier to entry and I believe this is one of the most amazing things about the potential of AI.