Humans Will Create New Jobs in the AI Era
Andrew Steinwold pointed out that historically, a large portion of global GDP was used for the spice trade from Asia to Europe. Now that AI is taking on "hard" work, humans will continuously create new tasks.
He believes there is no need to worry about AI taking all jobs, as society will naturally evolve new demands and activities.
In the market mechanism, after AI liberates productivity, capital and labor will shift towards creativity, experiences, and emerging services. Funds will flow into cultural entertainment, personalized customization, and unknown fields, benefiting from the intrinsic human drive to "create things" rather than mere efficiency replacement.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
Steinwold's views echo historical economic transformations, such as the shift of agricultural labor to factories and then to services during the Industrial Revolution. The spice trade was once a high-value chain (similar to today's tech supply chains), and the AI era is akin to the emergence of new professions following the widespread adoption of electricity or computers (e.g., software engineers, content creators).
In terms of capital pathways, after AI automates "hard" work, resources will be redirected to areas where humans have unique advantages (emotion, creativity, social interaction). Companies will invest in the experience economy and virtual worlds, motivated by the need for new demand to stimulate GDP growth, strategically shifting from cost-cutting to value creation.
Similar to how 20th-century automation replaced manufacturing jobs but spurred a technology and service boom, or how the internet eliminated some intermediaries yet created a platform economy, we are currently in a transition phase where AI moves from being a tool to becoming infrastructure. The focus of human activity will shift from repetitive labor to "storytelling" and exploring the unknown.
This fundamentally represents a restructuring of the industrial chain under technological substitution: AI takes on physical/repetitive cognitive labor, freeing humans to engage in higher-level creation. The mechanism involves a leap in productivity that reduces necessary working hours, with capital shifting from traditional industries to cultural, entertainment, and experiential industries, and pricing power transitioning from efficiency-driven machines to markets driven by human imagination.
ABAB News · Law of Cognition
- Technology liberates repetition; humans invent stories.
- Old demands fade; new demands live on; GDP has no ceiling.
- Hard work is left to AI; soft value remains with humans.