Your Job Is Disappearing. I Watched Mine Disappear At Least Six Times.
Automation always reveals the work you previously couldn't see.
From the late 19th century until well past the middle of the 20th century, many women worked as telephone operators. In the 1920s, there were about 230,000 of them sitting in front of switchboards and plugging calls through to wherever they were going.
Then, with the advent of the automatic exchange, the profession was wiped out.
It’s the classic story of technology erasing a job, and it’s the story everyone’s afraid of with AI.
The fear is everywhere, and it’s difficult to ignore. It seems as if every week there’s another spate of layoffs attributed to AI. You can’t help but think that the thing you’re doing is going away.
I lived a smaller version of that fear for almost twenty years. The job I had at Amazon when I started bore almost no resemblance to the one I had when I left the company. It changed underneath me again and again.
Every time, what I did got automated into something a beginner could do in an afternoon. Tasks that I’d spent years doing…
