Weekend Thoughts on White Collar AI Disruption
I’ve seen some extrapolations on the white collar job decline that are going a wee bit too far.
Some AI accel people have lost the plot a bit in their extrapolations:
the core of white collar job compensation / value creation = company strategy + sales + R&D/development.
There will be productivity gains and less headcount in these functions, but there is a big, big asymptote in that extrapolation that ppl are not accounting for IMO that is driving this freak out.
The board will hold people accountable for company strategy
Humans will sell products to other humans
Product IP / development / execution will still be owned by product ppl, even if accelerated a lot by AI involvement
Within those functions you will still have:
People that own the risk (leaders/managers)
People that do the work (albeit aided by a lot of AI, so less “doers”)
I don’t think we're jumping to a world where the ppl who are losing sleep at night about company direction/board meetings are the ones doing the work and talking to Claude. Not happening.
Right now, I think we are seeing all the low-hanging fruit that can be replaced in support functions and the busy work of the “doers.” But I think the extrapolation ig getting out of hand. Yes, it will change things a lot. But zooming out, the core white collar job functions will still exist, albeit in lower #’s, but new AI-related functions will likely arise.
This can all be true and we can still re-rate software and bits companies because there is clearly loss of TAM / potential pricing pressure / disruption. Both things can be true.
What do you think? Any thoughts?