Many professionals fear AI will replace their roles, but I believe this mirrors the panic of every major technological revolution. Drawing on the Industrial Revolution and the Internet era, I show that while technology displaces some jobs, it ultimately creates more and better ones. My aim is to shift the conversation from fear to adaptation, encouraging readers to proactively redefine their work in the new AI-driven economy.
“Our programmers, on one hand, are learning AI; on the other hand, they strongly resist using AI internally because they fear unemployment,” the CTO of a large software company told me.
This statement captures the awkward dilemma faced by many professionals today. Tech giants, led by Silicon Valley companies, are launching a white-collar “workforce adjustment” campaign. Companies like Block have laid off 30% of their staff at once. The reason is singular: AI is here, and we don’t need that many people anymore. This keeps many lying awake at night.
However, some remain optimistic. NVIDIA’s Jensen Huang said, “AI will create a large number of new jobs, and many of the jobs haven’t been invented yet.” This might offer a sliver of comfort to the anxious white-collar workers, but it’s of little practical help—after all, the next one to be unemployed could be oneself. But he is not blindly optimistic.
Taking a longer, historical perspective spanning centuries, we see a strikingly similar pattern. Every major technological revolution follows the same process: a surge in technological advancement, the disappearance of old professions, and the emergence of new ones. The short-term result is unemployment and anxiety, but the long-term outcome is increased incomes, improved living standards, and greater societal prosperity as a whole. Today’s artificial intelligence is repeating this historical cycle.
The Inevitable Phase: Acknowledging Job Displacement
First, we must acknowledge that AI is indeed displacing certain roles. In recent years, some companies have started reducing positions in customer service, basic translation, simple copywriting, and junior programming. Amazon alone laid off tens of thousands at once. This is because AI can handle a vast number of standardized tasks. For instance, AI customer service systems can now resolve the majority of common queries. A team that once required 30 people might now need only 3 employees for oversight and exceptional cases, augmented by AI. Changes in the software industry are also evident; AI coding tools generate large amounts of foundational code, leading many firms to cut back on junior developer roles.
This triggers anxiety and even depression among many white-collar workers. For a long time, it was widely believed that knowledge work was a safe career—that by diligently studying and securing an office job, one could obtain a stable income and a decent life. But when machines start writing code, drafting reports, and conducting analyses, that sense of security evaporates.
Looking back, history shows that similar panic induced by technological revolutions has recurred repeatedly over the past two hundred-plus years.
Historical Perspective: The Echo of the Luddites
At the end of the 18th century, with the advent of the steam engine, panic pervaded British society. Machine looms were far more efficient than manual labor. Numerous family-run textile workshops shut down, countless small artisan businesses went bankrupt, and craftsmen lost their livelihoods. They resented the machines for taking their means of survival. Some stormed into factories and smashed the machinery—this was the famous Luddite movement.
However, looking over a span of 100 years, the Industrial Revolution yielded a completely different outcome. With the development of factories, railways, steel mills, and coal mines, a massive number of new jobs emerged, providing workers with higher incomes and better lives.
The Long-Term Rise: Income and Lifestyle Transformation
Before the Industrial Revolution, most Europeans were farmers or artisans. In the 18th century, the annual income of a British farmer was roughly £6–8, and that of a rural weaver was about £7–10. This was barely enough to buy basic subsistence food like bread and oats, let alone daily meat or milk. Eating meat was an occasional treat reserved for holidays.
After the Industrial Revolution, new urban jobs appeared. By the mid-19th century, a city factory worker could earn £15–20 per year, while a farmer’s income remained around £10. This income gap attracted a huge influx of rural populations to urban work.
As industry developed, workers’ wages continued to rise. Between 1819 and 1851, the wages of British workers increased by 100%. Meanwhile, Britain’s per capita GDP grew from approximately $400 (calculated at 1970 prices) in the mid-18th century to about $800 by the mid-19th century. Such sustained growth had never occurred before the Industrial Revolution.
Increased worker income was immediately reflected in daily life. Meat, milk, butter, and sugar gradually found their way onto ordinary family tables. With improved nutrition, the average height of British children increased noticeably in the late 19th century. Technological advancement, in turn, impacted agriculture; between 1700 and 1850, British grain production increased by about 250%, with clear improvements in variety and quantity.
The Internet Age: A Recent Replay
The Internet era followed a similar pattern. American society believed the Internet impacted, squeezed, and even “killed” a significant portion of the real economy, leading to the bankruptcy, decline, and job losses of brick-and-mortar stores and traditional industries. Under the Internet’s impact, traditional sectors like video rental, newspaper publishing, retail, and travel agencies began to shrink, with positions being cut.
Before the 1990s, most young Americans could only enter traditional industries like manufacturing, printing, retail, and food service. In the US, the median annual income for a manufacturing worker was around $30,000, while retail and service jobs paid just over $20,000.
With the advent of the Internet, a cluster of new professions rapidly grew. Roles like software engineer, product manager, data analyst, UI designer, and e-commerce operator became significant employment fields within 30 years. The number of software developers employed in the US grew from about 400,000 in 1990 to approximately 1.7 million in 2023. The median annual salary for a software engineer has reached about $120,000. Engineers at some large tech companies even earn $200,000 to $400,000.
The Internet also created many new positions, such as data analysts. The US now has hundreds of thousands of data analysts, with median salaries generally around $120,000, compared to a median salary of only $30,000–$40,000 for retail jobs.
The Internet economy itself also grew rapidly. Research data shows the scale of the US Internet economy has reached about $4.9 trillion, accounting for roughly 18% of US GDP, and has driven the creation of over 28 million jobs.
In China, the e-commerce industry has driven employment for over 60 million people, including roles in e-commerce operations, logistics management, customer service, and content marketing. The live-streaming industry has also created a new occupational system. The number of full-time live-stream hosts in China has reached 2 million, with related employment across the entire live-streaming industry chain exceeding 10 million.
The Dawning AI Era: Displacement and Creation
Similar changes are unfolding in the arriving AI era. Artificial intelligence will indeed replace some standardized jobs, such as basic customer service, simple translation, and some entry-level programming work. But simultaneously, a new industrial system is taking shape. Roles like AI engineer, prompt engineer, model training engineer, AI product manager, and compute infrastructure engineer are rapidly growing.
Furthermore, the construction of large-scale data centers is creating new employment opportunities. As AI models grow in size, massive computing power centers are being built globally. A large AI data center requires power engineers, cooling system engineers, network engineers, and server maintenance personnel. These infrastructure roles often require higher technical skills and offer relatively stable incomes.
From a broader perspective, artificial intelligence is not merely a software technology; it is driving a new cycle of infrastructure construction. From energy and power to chips, data centers, and application systems, the entire industry chain is expanding, creating new jobs at every layer.
Redefining Work, Not Ending It
Artificial intelligence is transforming the workplace; it will make some jobs disappear. At the same time, however, it will create many more new ones. History has repeatedly proven that the change brought by technological revolutions is not simply “machines replacing humans.” Technology continuously redistributes labor. Some old professions vanish, some positions decrease, but new industries and new occupations are born accordingly.
Because ultimately, every technological revolution does not end work—it redefines it.
