Why Do I Still Have a Job?

Welcome everyone. 👏

• Introduction: Elon said what? 😒

• Data: How much 🚀

• History: Great Depression 🎩

• Technological Unemployment: Myth 🤖

• AI: Creating Jobs 🤖

A decade ago, the experts agreed I’d be out of job thanks to Ai. I’m still waiting. Additionally, I’m waiting for a decrease in data roles year over year in hopes that the data roles will be severely impacted by Ai. 😆 No luck. They’ve increased and in some cases, exponentially.

I’m a big fan of Elon Musk and his creations. I believe robots with advanced Ai models will make past industrial revolutions look like child’s play, however; I’m not so sure about this one. Elon Musk declared there will come a time in the very near future when no job is needed, thanks to an AI. Musk added that as a result, we won’t have universal basic income, we’ll have universal high income. Simply not sure about this prognostication.

When I’m asked about the reduction of roles by Ai in the data space I show people this bar graph below. (Global Data Generated Annually) When you see the far right side of that graph drop or decline in any way, let me know. Take note I’m focusing on my space, the data jobs.

There are plenty of roles that will be almost completely automated by machine learning models. Think about call centers. Machine learning models are completely revamping and reforming call centers.

Another interesting point about the graph below that’s not on the graph is the amount of data being generated globally that’s being touched or analyzed in some fashion. That number is 8-10%. Yep, the vast majority of the data being amassed isn’t seen by a human or any tool a human created. It’s just sitting there, waiting to be analyzed.

History may not repeat itself but is does one hell of an imitation. 🤣

Let’s travel back in time to a period where almost exactly the same thing was happening. 

It was 1938, the pain of the Great Depression was still very real. Unemployment in the US was around 20%. Everyone was worried about jobs.

In 1930, the prominent British economist John Maynard Keynes had warned that we were being afflicted with a new disease called technological unemployment. Labor-saving advances, he wrote, were outrunning the pace at which we can find new uses for labor. There seemed to be examples everywhere. New machinery was transforming factories and farms.

Does this resonate with you on some level? 👀It should. In 2025, we are hearing the exact same thing. Impressive recent breakthroughs in generative AI, smart robots, and driverless cars are again leading many to worry that advanced technologies will replace human workers and decrease the overall demand for labor. 🙄

Karl T. Compton, the president of MIT from 1930 to 1948 and one of the leading scientists of the day, wrote in the MIT Technology Review publication about the Bogey of Technological Unemployment.

For industry as a whole, he concluded, technological unemployment is a myth. That’s because, he argued, technology has created so many new industries and has expanded the market for many items by lowering the cost of production to make a price within reach of large masses of purchasers. In short, technological advances had created more jobs overall. The argument and the question of whether it is still true and remains pertinent in the age of AI. (It does)

Breakthroughs in generative AI, such as ChatGPT and other large language models, will likely transform the economy and labor markets. But there’s no convincing evidence that we’re on a path to a jobless future.

A recent Goldman Sachs report calculated that roughly two-thirds of US jobs are exposed to some degree of automation by AI. Yet this conclusion is often misinterpreted—it doesn’t mean all those jobs will be replaced. Rather, as the Goldman Sachs report notes, most of these positions are only partially exposed to automation. For many workers, AI will become part of the workday but won’t necessarily lead to layoffs.

In recent decades, companies have often used AI and advanced automation to slash jobs and cut costs. The degree and efficacy of this automation is hotly debated. I’ve been in the data space for thirty years and I’ve spent more than a decade in predictive analytics and I’ve yet to see a single job replaced by any machine learning model. Not one. Why is my input here important? Well, I’m the ones hired to build out this automation.

There’s no economic rule that innovation will in fact favor augmentation and job creation over this type of automation. But we have a choice going forward: we can use technology to simply replace workers, or we can use it to expand their skills and capabilities, leading to economic growth and new jobs.

While no one can accurately prognosticate the future, it seems unlikely that work itself will disappear. Although, at this point in my life I’m fine with a universal basic income check around twenty thousand a month. 🙂 

Thank everyone and have a great day. 👏