I Have been listening to Kunal Shah’s talks for a long time now. He recently said in a talk related to AI, “Inefficiency creates employment and every new technology, including AI, is reducing inefficiency.” This statement in its own right can become a powerful essay dimension on AI and Jobs. Historically, a large share of employment has existed because certain tasks required human intervention. Every major technological breakthrough, from the steam engine and assembly line to computers, the internet and now AI, has reduced the amount of human effort required to produce the same output. Seen through this lens, technology does not primarily eliminate jobs; it eliminates inefficiencies. The jobs most vulnerable are often those whose existence depends on repetitive, routine or information-processing inefficiencies. The larger lesson is that economic progress has never come from preserving inefficiency to create employment. It has come from increasing productivity and allowing human beings to move towards higher-value activities.
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