I know the word layoff is on the mind of a majority of corporate workers right now, and it is no joke.
This job market is brutal, and the number of texts I get from talented, highly-skilled people unable to find a job is revolting.
We are told we must adjust to a new reality where AI would steal most jobs, leaving us with “nothing” and having no economic prospects to sustain our lives.
But is this fear really about AI? Or is it about how short-lived our certainties have always been?
AI may ironically free us from the very system we fear losing.
There are many things that become so ominous to our life that we don’t realize how short a time they have been around.
Landline phones, televisions, Facebook — all came into our lives as disruptive technologies and stopped being the center of our lives before we realized it.
The same is going to happen to the conventional 9-to-5 workday. While so deeply ingrained in our modern consciousness, it represents a surprisingly brief experiment in the long arc of human labor history.
As AI reshapes how things get done, we stand to witness another transformation — one that is seeing us return to more goal-oriented rather than time-oriented work patterns.
The Final Nail In the Coffin Of Industrial Revolution Labor Patterns
A world of year-end reviews, clocking 40 hours a week, and more corporate shenanigans that people who have held real jobs, unlike me, tell me about have brought comfort to people they are realizing is being pulled from under them.
Yet, this wasn’t the case for like 95% of human history. We organized our labor around immediate needs and natural cycles.
The strict delineation of work time versus personal time would have seemed peculiar to our ancestors until the 18th century.
You all think a 4-day work week is a new progressive, modern way of working that we are experimenting with. Blah! Hunter-gatherers in the Stone Age worked just three to five hours daily.
The radical transformation of work schedules came with the Industrial Revolution, when labor became increasingly detached from natural rhythms and human needs.
By 1817, people were working unprecedented 80-100 hour weeks. Factory workers in mid-19th century England endured punishing 16-hour days, 311 days annually.
Workers lost control, prompting organized resistance to excessive work hours.
The breakthrough in the struggle came in the early 20th century.
In 1926, Henry Ford implemented the 40-hour workweek after discovering diminishing returns from longer hours.
In 1940, the 40-hour workweek became U.S. law, establishing what we now know as the standard schedule.
The term “9-to-5” became so emblematic of standardized work schedules that it entered popular culture.
In historical context, this rigid time-based approach to work has existed for less than a century — a mere blip in humanity’s 300,000-year history.
I think, substantial progress in AI would put the final nail in the coffin of everything that was wrong with the Industrial Revolution and the exploitation of labor that came with it.
While we put machines to work as manufacturing takes a more important role than ever before.
The Bigger Picture of AI-Driven Layoffs
Corporations exist for a single reason — to fetch returns for shareholders. It doesn’t matter how many times your manager says you’re like a family.
So, there are two things that are set to pan out. Either a company optimizes its workflow, doing more with a smaller headcount, or sees its business collapse.
In the next decade, it may become a more financially safe decision to be an entrepreneur or independent creator than being a 9-to-5er.
The jobs that remain relevant in the AI era will likely emphasize what humans accomplish rather than simply how long they work — a change that, viewed historically, represents less a revolution than a homecoming to more natural patterns of human productivity.
Estimated work hours falling post-AGI, continuing the trend from the peak of the early industrial age in the 18th century.
A recent Pew study found that 52% of Americans are worried about how AI is used in the workplace, yet only 16% incorporate it in any way in their work. I think there lies the crux of the issue.
If you’re more worried about keeping your job than swinging the hammer, you’ll miss the nail entirely, in my humble view.
If you think this is some hypothetical novelty of the future — just look at the past couple of years.
Companies like Cursor, Midjourney, and ElvenLabs are launching path-breaking products with a team of 10 people or so. Meanwhile, remind me, what is IBM doing?
AI is going to take down more inefficiently-run large corporations than it does talented people.
It is going to play a role in balancing out the scales in power in favor of the passionate, hard-working, obsessed little guy; take my word for it.
This article was published first as part of the Artificially Boosted newsletter.
