[Part 9] They Say You Won't Need to Earn in the AI Age. So Why Am I Still Anxious?
The futurists keep telling us.
When the AI age fully arrives,
we'll be liberated from labor.
Universal basic income will kick in.
Money itself might become irrelevant.
A new world is coming.
It sounds wonderful.
Part of me desperately wants to believe it.
But then I came across a report.
A hypothetical economic scenario
set in the year 2028.
···
The warning written in numbers
lands like an axe on my foot.
The S&P 500 down 38% from its peak.
Unemployment pushing past 10%.
White-collar job postings virtually gone.
*Based on a hypothetical scenario report (CitriniResearch, 2026)
The voices speaking of utopia
float somewhere above the clouds.
The warning written in numbers
lands like an axe on my foot.
Why do cold, hard numbers feel
more real than hopeful words?
History tells us that every great disruption
eventually brought prosperity.
But between the disruption and the prosperity,
there was always a gap —
a long, painful stretch before it reached
an ordinary family's dinner table.
|
For someone in their 20s, that gap is a learning experience |
For someone in their 40s or 50s, that gap is financial ruin |
So today, I want to sit with these questions.
Why is it that even when we hear hopeful stories
about AI, we can't quite settle down?
And for those of us responsible for a family
in this AI age — how should we think about all this?
I. Why the Optimism Rings Hollow
"Humanity will come out ahead in the end."
That's not wrong.
After the Industrial Revolution, people lived longer.
After automation, daily life got easier.
After the internet, information became limitless.
And yet — there's a reason this still feels empty.
Look at who's saying it.
For them, change is exciting.
It's an adventure.
But for someone checking tuition invoices every month,
calculating mortgage interest,
quietly setting aside money for aging parents —
"The future will be better."
— Sure. That's a comfort, for a moment.
"But right now?"
— Those words don't pay the bills.
The benefits always flow
to those who were ready first.
And the people who had time to get ready
were never the ones who had anything to fear.
···
We're not anxious because we're pessimists.
We're anxious because we have a life
we're responsible for. Today.
II. What History Actually Looked Like
History has run this pattern before.
The Industrial Revolution.
When the power loom arrived,
thousands of weavers poured into the streets.
They smashed the machines in protest.
The Luddite movement.
New jobs did eventually emerge.
But the people who filled those jobs
weren't the displaced weavers.
It was their children —
who could run the machines for less.
The Age of Automation.
As robots entered factories,
manual workers were the first to go.
Governments launched retraining programs.
But far fewer people landed new jobs
than anyone expected.
The Internet Revolution.
Travel agencies disappeared.
Record stores shut down.
Newspapers collapsed.
New roles emerged too —
developers, content creators.
But for someone who'd spent 20 years
in a disappearing industry,
those new worlds felt foreign — not like opportunity.
Corporations moved first, chasing efficiency.
Government policy always lagged behind.
And individuals — ordinary people —
absorbed the gap with their own bodies.
III. How AI Is Different This Time
"New jobs will emerge. They always do."
Historically, that was true.
Looms created factories.
Automation created engineers.
The internet created developers.
Every new role still required a human to do it.
But AI is moving differently.
First: the speed.
The Industrial Revolution gave society a generation to adapt.
The internet gave us nearly a decade.
AI is barely giving us years.
Second: the order.
Past automation hit blue-collar workers first.
AI is hitting white-collar workers first.
Analysts. Planners. Managers. Writers.
The roles we thought were safe
are the ones shaking now.
Third: what it replaces.
Old machines replaced muscle.
AI is starting to replace thought.
And now, protests are forming
outside AI company headquarters.
Just like the people who smashed machines 200 years ago.
History has seen this scene before.
IV. What It Looks Like From Where I Stand
I'm not a futurist.
I'm not a macro-economist or an investor.
I'm just someone trying to hold a family together.
From where I stand,
all the optimism sounds like this:
"It'll work out eventually."
But when is eventually?
For someone who needs to hold on
until the kids finish college —
eventually is too far away.
···
Governments have always been slow.
Companies have always followed profit.
That hasn't changed.
In the end, the only person
who will protect my family's life is
me.
Accepting that.
Maybe that's the first step —
coming down from the clouds of optimism
and looking clearly at what's in front of us.
Maybe the optimists are right.
Maybe AI will bring a new kind of abundance
to all of humanity.
But before that abundance reaches
an ordinary family's dinner table —
there may be another gap to cross.
···
Maybe what we need right now
isn't to find the answer.
But simply to ask:
what are we holding onto
as we make our way through this?
That's the question
we'll sit with in the next episode.
NEXT
What can I actually do, right now?
— Continues in Episode 10.
